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An 
Old - Fashioned Senator 



Orville H. Piatt 



Of Connecticut 



The Story of a Life Unselfishly Devoted to the 

Public Service 



By 

Louis A. Coolidge 



Illustrated 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York and London 

Ubc 1Rnicherbocl?er press 

1910 



C"> 



?1 






Copyright, iqio 

BY 

Louis A. Coolidgb 



"Cbe *n(clierboclter pw8B, t*ew Bork 



CC!.A^6i3S;4 



Swiftly the politic goes: is it dark? — he 

borrows a lantern ; 
Slowly the statesman and sure, guiding 

his steps by the stars. 

Lowell 



Hi 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

AMONG all the public men whom the writer of this 
sketch has known in the course of an experience 
in Washington embracing twenty years, Senator Piatt 
seems to have approached most nearly the perfect 
measure of disinterested service. That he should have 
been above any temptation to profit materially from 
his official place implies no special virtue, for that is 
fortunately a common attribute of Senators of the 
United States; but he possessed the rarer quality of 
disregard for contemporary applause or posthumous 
fame. He was ready to do each day's pressing duty 
conscientiously and unselfishly without regard to its 
effect upon his political fortune or personal prestige, 
and having the faculty of eft'ective co-operation in 
an exceptional degree, he held the unbounded con- 
fidence of his associates. The impression created by 
watching his public conduct from year to year has been 
strengthened since this book was undertaken by a study 
of his private life from boyhood and by a perusal of the 
fragmentary correspondence which, through no design 
of his, survives him. His record from youth to age 
was one of uncalculating consistency — of harmonious 
intellectual and spiritual development. 

In the decision of vital questions of legislation he 
was for years an important and frequently a control- 
ling factor. During an eventful time he exercised a 
more pervasive influence than any other Senator, yet 



vi Introduction 

so unobtrusively that it was almost the close of his 
career before his work received adequate recognition 
except from those who could appraise it near at hand. 
The Piatt Amendment first brought him the distinction 
he deserved, but that document was only the triumphant 
application of principles which he had long maintained. 
His place in American history will be larger as the years 
go by. 

In trying to delineate a character unusual in public 
life, it has been found expedient to review briefly the 
significant legislation of a quarter of a century to 
the shaping of which Senator Piatt's practical wis- 
dom, unfailing courage, and acknowledged loftiness of 
purpose were indispensable. 

Li, a., k^, 

Boston, February 22, 1910. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. JUDEA . •. . . . . I 

Birth and Ancestry — The Litchfield Hills — 
Early Days in Judea — Abolition and Re- 
ligious Dissent — The Underground Rail- 
road — Boyhood on the Farm. 

II. Teacher and Pupil . . . .13 

The "Master of the Gunnery"— A Pupil's 
Tribute — School Days — Ostracism for 
Anti-Slavery Views — Teaching School in 
Judea — A Year at Towanda — Admission 
to the Bar — Marriage — Removal to 
Meriden — A Lover of the Woods — Judea 
Revisited — The Adirondacks. 

III. Meriden 27 

Meriden and the First Church— Twenty- 
eight Years a Practising Lawyer — A Po- 
litical Organizer — Judge of Probate — 
Chairman of American and Republican 
State Committees— Secretary of State— 
A Member of the General Assembly- 
Speaker of the House— " Picture Piatt" 
—State's Attorney— The Bible Class- 
Masonry — The Metabetchouan Fishing 
and Game Club— Interest in Business 
Development— Financial Reverses. 

IV. The Midnight Caucus ... 38 

A Skilfully Conducted Canvass— The Mid- 
night Caucus— Election to the Senate 
— Newspaper Criticism— Reception at 
Meriden. 

vii 



viii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V. A Looker-on in the Senate . . 54 

First Experiences at Washington — The 
Forty-sixth Congress — Eulogy of Rush 
Clark. 

VI. Development of a Lawmaker . . 61 

Growth in the Senate — Personal Charac- 
teristics 

VII. Savior of the Patent System . 70 

Chairman of the Patents Committee — Pre- 
serving the Patent System — Speech of 
March 24, 1884 — Friend of the American 
Inventor. 

VIII. The Work for International Copy- 
right, 1884-1891 .... 83 

International Copyright — A Legislative 
Triumph — Law of 1891 — Subsequent 
Legislation. 

IX. Protector of the Indian . . 114 

The Red Man's Most Practical and Useful 
Friend — Fourteen Years with the Com- 
mittee on Indian Affairs — Prevents Mis- 
chievous Legislation. 

X. New States in the West . . . 134 

Chairman of Committee on Territories — 
Instrumental in Admitting Six New 
States — In Close Touch with the West. 

XL The Foreign-Born American . . 147 

Restriction of Immigration — Advocate of 
Reasonable Legislation — His Opinion of 
the Adopted Citizen. 

XII. Fair Play towards China . 153 

Chinese Exclusion — Opposes Act of 1882 — 
Unsuccessful Attempt to Amend Geary 
Act — Legislation of 1888 — Prevents Dras- 
tic Legislation in 1902 and 1904. 



Contents 



IX 



CHAPTER 

XIII. 



PAGE 
164 



XIV. 



XV. 



XVI. 



Sound Finance 

First Essays in Finance— Refunding Bill of 
1 88 1— Speech of February 17th— Proposes 
Abolition of Tax on Bank Circulation. 

The Free-Silver Delusion . • i75 

A Genuine Bimetallist— Opposes Coin Cer- 
tificates in 1888— The Sherman Law of 
1890— Opponent of Free Silver — Objects 
to Hasty Repeal — Retaliation against 
Great Britain. 

Paper Money ... .189 

Continued Agitation for Free Silver— Op- 
poses Fictitious "Seigniorage" in 1895— 
Criticism of the Greenbacks— For Sound 
Money in 1896 

Real Currency Reform . . -199 

The Finance Committee— Helps to Frame 
Law of 1900— Letter to Timothy D wight 
—Consideration of Additional Measures of 
Relief— Opposed to Asset Currency— The 
Aldrich Bill— Conference at Warwick— A 
Central Bank. 

XVII. A Staunch Protectionist . . 212 

The Cleveland Message of 1887— Attack 
upon the Administration Policy— A Com.- 
prehensive Plea for Protection— Defender 
of American Industries— Opposition to ■ 
the Mills Bill— Contrast between Labor 
and Industry North and South— The Duty 
on Tin Plate— The Tariff not Responsible 
for the Trusts. 

XVIII. The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 227 

McKinley Tariff and the Lodge Election 
Bill_Democratic Obstruction in the Sen- 
ate—An Unswerving Supporter of the 
Party Programme— Argues for Enactment 
of Both Bills— The Quay Resolution- 
Enactment of the Tariff Bill— The Elec- 



X Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

tion Bill Postponed — Lukewarm towards 
Blaine's Reciprocity Proposal — Unchanged 
by Republican Defeat. 

XIX. The Wilson-Gorman Bill . .241 

An Aid to the Finance Committee — Mr. 
North's Experience — Active in Debate — 
Keen Analysis of the Democratic Position 
— "Incidental Protection" Ridiculed — 
A Deadly Blow at Farmers — Opposed to 
Free Raw Materials. 

XX. The Dingley Tariff . . 252 

A Member of the Finance Committee — A 
Controlling Factor in Tariff Legislation — 
Attitude toward the Reciprocity Clauses — 
A Strong Advocate of Administration 
Policies. 

XXI. Free Cuba 260 

Opposed to Recognition of Belligerency — 
Tries to Prevent War — Pleads for Modera- 
tion — A Pillar of Conservatism — A Strong 
Aid to the Administration — Growth of 
the War Sentiment — Destruction of the 
Maine — The President's Message — Adop- 
tion of Resolutions for Intervention — 
In a Small Minority — Hostilities Precipi- 
tated. 

XXII. Expansion and Imperialism . . 284 

For Unrelenting Prosecution of the War 
— Results of the War Accepted — Annexa- 
tion of Hawaii — Urges Retention of Philip- 
pines — Letter to President McKinley — 
Letter to Professor Fisher — Strongly Ad- 
vocates Ratification of Treaty of Peace — 
Speech of December 19, 1899 — The Con- 
stitutional Right of the United States to 
Acquire and Govern Territory. 



Contents 



XI 



CHAPTER 

XXIII. 



XXIV. 



XXV. 



XXVI. 



XXVII. 



XXVIII. 



XXIX. 



XXX. 



PAGE 

National Duty .... 303 

Debate with Senator Hoar, February 11, 
1902 — The Destiny of the Republic — 
Favors a Colonial System. 

On Guard OVER Cuba . . 3^^ 

New Problems — Chairman of Committee on 
Cuban Relations — Opposed to Annexa- 
tion — The Question of Sovereignty — 
Visit to Cuba, 1900 — The Cuban Scandal 
— Extra Allowances. 

Cuban Scandals and Allowances . 324 

Investigation Authorized — Speech of May 
23, 1900 — Longing for Home — Corre- 
spondence with General Wood. 

The Platt Amendment . . . 336 

Establishing a New Republic— Conferences 
of Cuban Committee — The Question of 
Authorship. 

The Porto-Rican Tariff . . 357 

Our "Plain Duty" toward Porto Rico- 
Organizes Opposition to Free Trade with 
the Island— A Successful Parliamentary 
Campaign — Letter to Lyman Abbott. 



Reciprocity with Cuba . 

Bulwark of the Administration — Leader 
of Long Struggle in Congress— Opposi- 
tion at Home — Ratification of Treaty. 

Against Tariff Revision . 

Opposed to Tariff Tinkering 



Letter to President 
Dingley Law. 



m 1905 — 
Roosevelt — Saves 



369 



384 



Antiquated Senate Ways . . 395 

The Rules of the Senate— Advocates Open 
Executive Sessions— Speech of April 13, 
1886 — Proposes Limitation of Debate. 



Xll 



Contents 



CHAPTER 

XXXI. 



XXXII. 



XXXIII. 



XXXIV. 



XXXV. 



XXXVI. 



Dignity of the Senate . 

"Legislation by Unanimous Consent "- 



-The 



PAGE 
411 



419 



438 



Senate not Decadent — Not a Rich Man's 
Club — Opposes Seating of Quay — The 
Tillman-McLaurin Episode. 

Labor and Capital .... 

An Unbiassed Judge — Opposed to Radical 
Measures — A Friend of the Workingman 
— Defeats Anti-Injunction and Eight- 
Hour Bills — Supports President Roosevelt 
in Coal Strike and Northern Securi- 
ties Case^Address before Workingmen's 
Club at Hartford — Opposition to Anti- 
Option Bill — Speech of January 17-19, 
1893. 

Regulation of Corporations . 

Favors Reasonable Control — Opposes Sher- 
man Anti-Trust Bill — In Sympathy with 
Roosevelt's Plans — Against Littlefield 
Bill in 1902 — Opposes Income and Cor- 
poration Tax. 

The Interstate Commerce Law 

The Initiatory Legislation of 1887— Op- 
poses Anti-Pooling Clause — Position Jus- 
tified by Events — Favors Elkins Bill — 
Opposed to Hasty Legislation in 1905 — 
"Too Great a Subject to Play with." 

A Robust American 

Sturdily Assertive in International Affairs — 
The United States a World Power — Sus- 
tains Cleveland's Venezuelan Message — 
Arbitration with Great Britain — The 
Hague Treaties. 

The Panama Affair . . . 483 

Always for the Canal — A New Republic on 
the Isthmus — Defender of the Adminis- 
tration — Speech of January 20-21, 1904 — 
The "Yale Protest." 



455 



467 



Contents 



xiu 



CHAPTER 

XXXVIL 



Relations with the White House . 

Dealings with Many Administrations — 
The River and Harbor Bill — Marshall 
Jewell and Garfield — Hawley's Candidacy 
in 1884 — A Critic of Cleveland — Sup- 
porter of Harrison. 



XXXVIII. McKlNLEY AND HaNNA 



XXXIX. 



XL. 



XLI. 



XLII. 



XLIII. 



XLIV. 



Mr. Piatt's Course in 1896 — Later a Friend 
of McKinley and Hanna — Hawley for 
the Cabinet. 

Roosevelt ..... 

A Loyal Supporter of Roosevelt — Urges 
Nomination in 1904 — Appeals to Busi- 
ness Interests — For Moderation in 1905. 



Politics and Patronage . 

A Stranger to Political Manipulation— 
noyed by Office Seekers — Zealous 
Connecticut. 



An- 
for 



Connecticut's First Citizen 

Successive Elections to Senate without Op- 
position — Lack of Personal Organization 
— Offer of Position as Chief-Justice of 
Supreme Court of Errors — Rejects Sug- 
gestion of Selection as President pro tern. 

The Fessenden Episode . 

An Evanescent Disturbance — Proposed for 
Vice-President— Refuses to Make a Per- 
sonal Canvass for Re-election — Election 
in 1897 — Political Expenditures. 

A State's Crowning Tribute . 

Election in 1903— Address to Legislature— A 
Senator's Duty— Reception by the State 
at Hartford. 

Fruitful Years .... 

The Last Phase— Ratification of Colombian 
Treaty — The Adirondacks — Special Ses- 



494 



502 



511 



524 



535 



54'2 



554 



563 



XIV 



Contents 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



XLV. 



XLVI. 



XLVII. 



XLVIII. 



sion of 1903 — Pension Order 78 — Post- 
Office Scandals — Death of Mark Hanna — 
Nomination and Election of Roosevelt, 
1904. 

The Last Session .... 

Chairman of Judiciary Committee — The 
Swayne Impeachment — A Day's Doings 
— Legislation of Last Session — Opposes 
Heyburn Pure Food Law. 

The End 

A President's Letter — Funeral of General 
Hawley — Address at Hartford — Death 
and Burial. 

An Old-Fashioned Senator 

The Lincoln of New England — Personal 
Traits — Mental Habit — Religious Tenden- 
cies — A Lover of Old Ways — Lofty Ideals. 

Words Fitly Spoken 

Tributes by his Associates in Public Life — 
Eulogies in the Senate — Senator Lodge's 
Estimate of his Character. 



Appendix 



II. 



III. 

IV. 

V. 



Memorial Resolutions adopted by the Con- 
necticut General Assembly at the January 
Session Nineteen Hundred and Five. 

Message of Governor Roberts announcing to 
the general Assembly the death of Mr. 
Piatt. 

Memorials in Bronze. 

The Piatt National Park. 

The Judgment of the Press. 



571 



581 



588 



598 



619 



Index 



637 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Orville H. Platt . . * . Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Parker, Washington, D. C. 

The Boyhood Home of Orville H. Platt at 
Washington, Conn. 

Washington Green and the Congregational 
Church ..... 



8 

12 

24 
30 

34 
150 
208 



Orville H. Platt, Aged 18 

From a daguerreotype taken in 1845 

A Washington Trout Brook 

The Home in Meriden, Conn. 

A Fly-casting Rapid of the Shepaug River 

On the Way to Steep Rock 

In Conference at Warwick 

Senators Platt, Spooner, Allison, and Aldrich 

From a photograph by Edgar H. Horton & Co., Provi- 
dence, R. I. 

Facsimile of Letter to President McKinley 

Concerning the Philippine Islands . . 288 

KiRBY Corner, Washington, Conn. . . .326 

Orville H. Platt 486 

From a photograph by Prince, Washington, D. C. 

XV 



^vi Illustrations 



FACING PAGE 



The Last Camp in the Adirondacks, 1904, at 

Long Lake ...... 564 

In the Village Cemetery ..... 584 

The Memorial Tablet to Orville H. Platt 
Placed by E. H. Van Ingen, Esq., in the 
Gunn Memorial Library, Washington, Conn. 590 
A. Bertram Pegram, Sculptor 



OrviUe H. Piatt 



Orville H. Piatt 



CHAPTER I 



JUDEA 

Birth and Ancestry — The Litchfield Hills — Early Days in Judea — 

Abolition and Religious Dissent — The Underground Railroad — 

Boyhood on the Farm. 

ORVILLE HITCHCOCK PLATT was born in the 
little town of Washington, Litchfield County, 
Connecticut, July 19, 1827. His father was Daniel 
Gould Piatt ; his mother, Almyra Hitchcock Piatt. He 
was fortunate in his inheritance, in the time and place 
of his birth, and in the surroundings of his early years. 
Through both father and mother he was descended 
from long lines of New England farmers, who, genera- 
tion after generation, had stood for something in the 
communities in which they lived. From father to 
son they held office in the church and in the town. 
They were landowners, deacons, tithing-men, and 
captains of militia. One ancestor was imprisoned by 
Governor Andros in 168 1 for daring to attend a meeting 
of delegates "to devise means to obtain a redress of 
grievances under his arbitrary rule." Another was 
among those who marched to Fishkill in the Burgoyne 



2 Orville H. Piatt 

campaign of October, 1777, to reinforce General Put- 
nam. Orville Piatt's grandfather, John, was also a 
soldier in the Revolution and belonged to the band of 
"Prison Ship Martyrs." His own father was deputy 
sheriff and judge of probate, a school-teacher at times, 
as well as a tiller of the soil. It was a sturdy, loyal, 
patriotic, efficient New England stock. 1 

For a boy to have been born in Litchfield County in 

« The Platt Genealogy: The Piatt family was established in 
New Haven County, in 1638, when (I) Richard Platt, an Eng- 
lishman, and his wife Mary, with their four children, landed at New 
Haven. He was one of the sixty -one who formed a church society, 
August 22, 1639, and proceeded at once to settle at Milford. Of 
his eight children, the third, (and second son,) (II) Isaac, was en- 
rolled in 1666 among the fifty-seven landowners of Huntington, 
Long Island, where he had probably lived some years. He was 
recorded there in 1687. In Milford, he married Phoebe Smith, 
March 12, 1640, and, more than twenty years later, he married at 
Huntington, Elizabeth, daughter of Jonas Wood. He was captain 
of militia, and held every office of consequence in the town, where 
he died July 31, 1691. 

He had six children; the eldest son and second child, (III) 
Jonas, bom August 16, 1667, married Sarah Scudder, and had 
four sons: (IV) Obadiah, the eldest of these, purchased lands in 
Fairfield in 1724. He married Mary Smith, August 10, 1722, and 
had eight children. The wife and mother died November 16, 1771, 
at Ridgefield. (V) Jonas, their second son and third child, bom 
October 9, 1727, settled at Redding, where he was married, October 
17, 1747, to Elizabeth, daughter of Ephraim Sanford of that place. 
Both were admitted church members at Redding, July 5, 1749- 
They had ten children, of whom the eldest, (VI) John, was baptized 
February 5, 1752, at Redding. Both father and son served as 
soldiers in the Revolutionary Army, and the former was made 
prisoner in the Danbury raid in April, 1777, but appeared among 
those who marched to Fishkill in the following October, to reinforce 
General Putnam. The son was taken prisoner at Fort Lee, Novem- 
ber 16, 1776. He married Elizabeth Parmelee July 7, 1775, and 
settled' after the war in the town of Washington, Connecticut. 
Their children were: John, bom Febmary 21, 1776; David, bora 
August 31, 1778; Ruth Ann, March 31, 1782; Betsy, May 8, 1790; 
Daniel Gould, July 25, 1797. 



Judea 3 

the early days of the last century was to have been 
placed in the pathway of opportunity. Nature has 
been gracious to the region round about. Lying at the 
southernmost spur of the Berkshires, villages perched 
on the brows of many hills look out over the winding 
valleys of the Housatonic and Shepaug. The town of 
Litchfield is one of the historic places of America, rich 
in memories of famous men and happenings. It was 
the seat of the earliest law school in America, and the 
home either temporary or permanent of many who 
were eminent at the bar or in the pulpit. Lyman 
Beecher preached there for years; Henry Ward Beecher 
and Harriet Beecher Stowe were born there. It was 
the home of Oliver Wolcott and the birthplace of 
Ethan Allen. It had been the home of Colonel Tal- 
madge, an aide on General Washington's staff. Aaron 
Burr lived there for a year as a young man. Horace 
Bushnell, whose name is honored throughout the 
world, was born in Litchfield and spent his youth at 
New Preston, near-by. Many others might be named 
whose fame lends interest and character to the charm- 
ing town. In the early years of the last century, the 

(VII) Daniel Gould Platt, married Almyra Hitchcock, Jan- 
uary 3, 1 817, and they had children: Orville, bom March 11, 1822, 
who died in 1826; Orville Hitchcock, born July 19, 1827, in 
"Washington; and Simeon D., bom February 12, 1832. The father 
died October 26, 1871. 

1638. 

Richard Platt, New Haven, Connecticut. 

Isaac, Huntington, Long Island. 

Jonas, 

Obadiah, Fairfield and Redding. 

Jonas, Redding. 

John, Redding and Washington. 

Daniel Gould, Washington, Connecticut. 

Orville Hitchcock, Washington. 



4 Orville H. Piatt 

place was at its best, and Orville Piatt, born and bred 
twelve miles to the south in the equally beautiful 
village of Washington, could hardly have avoided 
absorbing some of the inspiration of the environment. 
Within a radius of fifteen miles of his birthplace, were 
two other towns of Litchfield County rich in associa- 
tions. At New Milford to the south, Roger Sherman 
lived for twenty years. At Torrington, an equal 
distance to the north, John Brown was born. 

The town of Washington in its own right could claim 
distinction. It was organized during the throes of the 
struggle for independence by uniting two ancient 
Ecclesiastical Societies, and it is said to have been the 
first community in America to adopt the name of the 
Father of his Country. The older of these societies, 
comprising the village of Judea, lay on a level plateau 
overlooking the valley through which the Shepaug 
goes tumbling down to meet the Housatonic. Four 
miles away, on the other side of a high hill, were the 
villages of Marbledale and New Preston, which com- 
prised the other Ecclesiastical Society. It was in the 
village of Judea that Orville H. Piatt was born, — a 
community puritan and conservative to the roots. 
New Preston, on the other hand, had always been known 
as the home of religious and political dissent. It was 
the youthful Piatt's good fortune to develop into man- 
hood at a time when that part of New England, like 
many others, was in the midst of a moral revolution. 
The year in which he was born, 1827, was the year in 
which William Lloyd Garrison became the editor of the 
National Philanthropist. Four years later, Garrison 
established The Liberator. The ancient community of 
Washington offered fertile soil in which to sow the 
Abolition seed, and Daniel Gould Piatt was one of 



Judea 5 

those who received the seed gladly. In 1837, shortly 
after the martyrdom of Love joy, an Abolition conven- 
tion met at Hartford, and Daniel Piatt attended it with 
his wife. There were four others in attendance from 
Judea— Mr. and Mrs. John Gunn, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Lewis A. Canfield — representatives of a family which 
was to count for much in Orville Piatt's life. From 
that time, for many years, this faithful group were the 
centre of a storm of persecution by which less heroic 
souls would have been overwhelmed. The pastor of the 
Judea church was Reverend Gordon Hayes, an able 
and bigoted theologian. Abolitionism he regarded as a 
heresy and he set about to stamp it out. He devoted 
sermon after sermon to attacks upon the strange doc- 
trine, denouncing it in the name of patriotism and 
religion. He found sanction for slavery in the Bible, 
and he was as honest as he was earnest in his attacks 
upon those who sought to bring it to an end. The 
Abolitionists were equally intense. They held meet- 
ings in which their speakers cried out against slavery as 
a sin and forswore communion with slaveholders as 
collusion with sin. Finally an extraordinary episode 
brought on the crisis with a rush. Miss Abby Kelly 
in 1839 was known far and wide as an Abolition speaker. 
In August of that year she was preaching the New 
Evangel throughout western Connecticut, and Daniel 
Piatt and Lewis Canfield with their wives drove to a 
neighboring town and brought her to Washington, 
where she remained for a fortnight, appearing at 
numerous Abolition meetings. For women to speak 
in public was in those days an almost unheard of thing, 
and for one to enter actively into the discussion of 
political affairs was revolutionary and abhorrent. 
Parson Hayes and his conservative congregation were 



6 Orville H. Piatt 

shaken with wrath. The impudent challenge of the 
AboHtionists was met with promptness and decision. 
Under the date of August 8, 1839, there appears in the 
records of the Judea church the following entry : 

At a meeting of the church convened in consequence of a 
notice of a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society at which 
it was said a female would lecture : 

Resolved, That we are opposed to the introduction of 
female public lecturers into this society by members of 
this church, and to females giving such lectures in it. 

This action was followed promptly by Mr. Hayes in 
a sermon from the following plain-spoken text : 

Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, be- 
cause thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth her- 
self a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to 
commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. 

And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and 
she repented not. 

Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit 
adultery with her into great tribulation, except they re- 
pent of their deeds. — Rev. ii., 20-22. 

The sermon fitted the text. The reverend preacher, 
looking over to where Miss Abby Kelly sat in the con- 
gregation, referred to female lecturers travelling alone 
by night and by day, and plainly intimated that the 
lady's character was no better than it ought to be. As 
the benediction was pronounced, John Gunn called 
down from the gallery that the minister's insinuations 
were false. As the preacher was leaving the church. 
Miss Abby Kelly walked directly up to him and said: 

" Gordon Hayes, you have said things most injurious 
to my character. I hope God will forgive you." 

After such an episode, the warring factions could not 



Judea 7 

listen to the word of God from the same pulpit. The 
Abolitionists withdrew and organized a church of their 
own. Their secession was followed promptly by ex- 
communication. They had no recognized place of 
meeting, but gathered in different villages all over 
the county, often compelled to resort to barns and 
groves. Among these covenanters were Daniel Gould 
Piatt and Almyra Hitchcock Piatt. Their oldest boy, 
Orville, was then at the impressionable age of twelve 
years. 

A little later, the Reverend Gordon Hayes himself 
became discredited by the vigor of a sermon denounc- 
ing calisthenics, promiscuous dancing, and tableaux as 
the service of Satan and the sure concomitants of vice. 
He was dismissed from the church, and with his de- 
parture the differences gradually were healed. The 
Abolitionists who had been excommunicated were 
privately invited to re-unite with the church. They 
declined, but the bitterness of the conflict was at an 
end.^ 

1 Of this time, nearly fifty years later, Mr. Piatt wrote; 

"It was the time of the fierce Anti-Slavery excitement — one of 
those periods in the history of communities when the hearts of 
men are stirred to attack great and hideous wrongs, and to do 
battle for the right with a zeal and courage which cannot be hin- 
dered or abated until the right triumphs — -a time when not only 
fetters on human limbs but fetters on human thought were to be 
broken. 

"A great reform had begun. A few men had seen the wickedness 
of slavery and had fathered the movement for its Abolition. Hu- 
man rights in the eyes of these men had become sacred, and they 
had determined that they should be recognized and respected. 
Slavery was strongly intrenched and defended. Its power was 
everywhere felt; its influence penetrated the state, the church, 
society. It was a fearful sin and crime against God and against 
man, and eyes to see its wickedness and courage to attack it were 
given to only a few rare souls. They made the fight manfully 
and nobly, but they were met and opposed by almost the entire 



8 Orville H. Piatt 

From father and mother of deep religious convictions, 
mihtant Abolitionists who were ready to suffer excom- 
munication from the church for an ideal, Orville Piatt 
inherited a conscience, righteous courage, and lofty 
principles. Every particle of information that comes 

people. An Abolitionist was but one against a hundred or a 
thousand. The assailants of slavery were proscribed, shunned, 
mobbed, and treated as social outcasts. Neither they nor their 
children were welcomed in the house of one who was not an Abo- 
litionist. The social proscription of those days can scarcely be 
understood or imagined. Probably the world has never seen a 
loftier courage or more heroic living than was manifested by the 
men who saw their duty to the slave, and through the slave to 
humanity. The slave was a man, and as such, men were ready 
to suffer all things in his behalf, to die if necessary. 

" Like all reformers, the Abolitionist was aggressive. Slavery was 
the crime of crimes, and it was, in his conviction, the solemn duty 
of all men to attack it. Whoever defended or apologized for it 
was as wicked as the slaveholders. The Whig party was deemed 
to be governed by the slaveholders, so the Abolitionists withdrew 
from it and made war upon it. The Constitution was claimed to 
guarantee the right of property in slaves, and the Abolitionists 
repudiated and denounced the Constitution. But the battle raged 
fiercest in the church. Slavery was defended from the Bible; 
church organizations refused, upon the demand of the Abolitionists, 
to pass resolutions against the institution, or to say that slave- 
holding was incompatible with church membership or Christian 
character; while ministers preached in favor of slavery and against 
the Abolitionists. 

" The little town of Washington was in a fever of excitement. 
The minister from the pulpit thundered anathemas against the 
AboHtionists, while they, in their turn, denounced the church, 
and those of its members who apologized for slavery and the slave- 
holder, as equal in guilt with him. The minister proclaimed the 
authority of the church to bind its members; the Abolitionists, in 
turn, defied the church. The doctrines of the church came to 
stand for religion, and the Abolitionists attacked not only the 
church but its creed. The church retorted with the cry of infi- 
delity, excommunicated the unruly and insubordinate members, 
and was, for the time being, victorious. It will be readily seen that 
such a conflict went to the roots of religious faith and doctrine. 
Men became freethinkers, in the sense that they thought freely 




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Judea 9 

down to us concerning this remarkable couple tends to 
increase our respect for them. For years they carried 
on their fight against slavery, buoyed up by the in- 
spiration of the little band of Abohtion co-workers. 
Many years after their death, an old friend in a remi- 
niscent letter dated July 6, 1901, wrote to Senator 
Piatt of a visit to Judea in 1847 : 

I was at home in your father's house. He is one amongst 
the early Abolitionists who is silhouetted on my memory 
most vividly, and of all the Anti-Slavery women, your 
mother is so distinctly in the foreground, the others of our 
State seem accessories. I cannot define the elements of 
her personality and character, but they stand out in my 
memory with such clearness that half a century has not 
dimmed the features. 

Your father was a full-grown man in stature, as well as in 
conscience and intellect; your mother, a heroic soul, one 
among ten thousand. I see her now as she was in 1842-8 
to the hunted Abolitionist, "the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land. "^ 



and fearlessly. Sometimes, doubtless, they were wrong, but 
always in earnest and outspoken. Creeds could not bind the con- 
sciences of such men. They found a law higher than creeds; they 
inquired only what was duty to God and man, and did their duty 
as they saw it." 

> A school-fellow has said of Orville Piatt's father and mother: 
"Daniel Piatt was a man of fine face and figure, intelligent, kindly, 
and courteous. He took a prominent part in town politics and 
religious meetings, and was a forcible, modest, and convincing 
speaker. Orville's mother was a stately, handsome woman, quiet 
in manner, prudent in speech, but positive in her convictions. 
She seldom mingled in social gatherings, but found her greatest 
pleasure in the simple home life, attending to her domestic duties, 
reading the Scriptures and standard works, and teaching her boys 
by precept and example the virtues of goodness, charity, sobriety, 
and whatever else contributed to the development of sturdy self- 
reliance and manly manhood. In all the essentials of wise char- 
acter building she was never lacking. The impress she left on 



lo Orville H. Piatt 

Daniel Piatt's home was a station on the under- 
ground railway. Many a trembling black refugee came 
there by night to be forwarded by him on the road to 
Canada. The usual route was by way of New Milford, 
to Washington, whence they were taken by night to 
General Uriel Tuttle's in Torrington or Dr. Vaill's on 
the Wolcottville road. Orville, a boy in his teens, used 
to accompany his father frequently on these trips. 
The slaves stayed, as a rule, but a short time at the 
Piatt farm, though some remained for several weeks 
until it was learned, through the channels of communi- 
cation among Abolitionists, that their whereabouts was 
suspected; then they were sent on. 

Aside from such incidents typical of an heroic time, 
the lad's life was that of the ordinary farmer's boy of 
the day. His parents had neither poverty nor riches. 
The farm his father tilled was rented on shares. The 
home, a typical farmhouse of the time, still stands. 
One who remembers the early days says : 

Orville's mind was wholesome and lasting. She was ever a living 
memory in his heart, and he never spoke of her except in terms of 
reverent affection. She was an excellent housewife, baked her 
own bread, made her own butter, and kept the wearing apparel 
of father and sons, as well as her own, in excellent condition. 
Farmers' wives had to work in those days, and Mrs. Piatt never 
shirked her share. Her kitchen, dining- and sitting-rooms (the 
parlor was a later innovation), were always cleanly and inviting." 
Almyra Hitchcock was one of a numerous family, several of 
whom emigrated to the Western Reserve in Ohio, where their 
descendants still live. A brother was Samuel J. Hitchcock, bom 
at Bethlehem, Connecticut, and graduated at Yale in 1809. He 
was a tutor at Yale from 1811 to 1815, and was subsequently, 
until his death, instructor of law. He received the degree of LL.D. 
in 1842. Died in 1845. He was mayor of the city of New Haven, 
judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and commissioner of bank- 
ruptcy during the continuance of the national bankruptcy law. 
Another brother, Benjamin, was an editor of the New Haven 
Journal and Courier. 



Judea 



II 



The home was a two-storied white structure about a mile 
from town, facing southerly, a pleasant yard in front en- 
closing shrubbery and the inevitable lilac bushes, the 
earliest harbingers of a New England spring. It was 
situated on a high plateau sloping to the roadway and 
thence to a ravine, through which ran a brook that 
crossed the road farther down, affording a favorite drink- 
ing place for horses. On the east was the garden patch, 
and north, the farm, small-sized and stony. The roadway 
passing by the house made a circuit towards the north 
through chestnut woods, then turning to the right came 
to the house of Elnathan Mitchell, a brother of the famous 
scientist, Professor Mitchell of North Carolina. 

During the busy haying season, as a rule, twelve or 
thirteen men would be employed, and the mother always 
took care of them unaided by any maid. In the 
morning, when all were gathered for family worship, the 
father would read the Scripture and the mother would 
explain it. Young Piatt worked with his father until 
he was eighteen years of age. Sometimes he worked 
for other farmers for wages. Daniel Nettleton, who 
used to be employed on the Piatt farm during haying, 
says of him: 

Orville was a fine mower, cutting faster and closer, and 
carrying a much wider swath than any of the men. It was 
the custom in those days to start a large number of men 
mowing, one just behind another, and Orville was 
always put ahead, leading the field from the start and 
right through. 

As a boy [Mr. Piatt wrote once to a friend], I used to 
make maple syrup on my father's farm, after the rude 
methods of those days, carrying sap buckets on a neck yoke 
sometimes a quarter to a third of a mile, boiling it away to 



12 Orville H. Piatt 

syrup or sugaring-off point in an old potash kettle in an 
outhouse at home — so I think I know when it is good.^ 

As a boy just bursting into young manhood Orville 
Piatt is remembered as " fine-looking, tall, and hand- 
some, with beautiful dark brown hair and eyes." One 
who afterwards came to know him intimately says: 

All my life I have carried in my mind the picture of 
Orville Piatt and his younger brother, Simeon, as they 
used to come into the gallery of the old Judea church. 
Orville was the tallest and handsomest young man I have 
ever seen. 

1 Many years later in the United States Senate, Mr. Piatt re- 
ferred to conditions in his native State during his boyhood as 
follows : " I am not a very old man, but recollection carries me back 
fifty years, when there was no railroad, no coal used, no steam 
power used; no woollen factories except of the rudest sort; no tele- 
graph in Connecticut. Possibly there were one hundred tons of 
coal consumed in the State annually. It is possible that there was 
the rude beginning of manufacturing establishments in which 
steam was the motive power; but practically there were none of 
these improvements in Connecticut. The people were rural and 
agricultural; a few shops, water furnishing the motive power, were 
scattered up and down the streams of the State, but almost the 
entire population were engaged in agriculture. It was a time when 
the handbrake and the hetchel prepared the flax which was raised 
within her borders, when hand-spinning and the hand-loom pre- 
pared it for use. My mind goes back and takes in the days of my 
early boyhood, when wool was carded by hand, when it was spun 
and woven by the mothers and the daughters, when it was then 
taken to the fulling-mill and when the tailoress came and in the 
household cut and made the cloth into garments for the use of 
the family. It was the day of the village shoemaker, the day of the 
grist-mill, the day of the stage-coach, the day of the pillion. There 
were no carpets; no piano; few books; hand-sewing only; hand- 
knitting; the tallow candle; the unwarmed, unlighted church; the 
schoolhouse with its hard, rough benches; and the slow post-route, 
the mail once a week; a weekly paper only. It was a week's 
journey from Connecticut to Washington; six weeks' journey from 
Connecticut to Ohio. Five thousand dollars in those days was a 
competence and $10,000 was a fortune." 




ORVILLE H. PLATT, AGED 18 
FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE TAKEN IN 1845 



CHAPTER II 



TEACHER AND PUPIL 



The "Master of the Gunnery" — A Pupil's Tribute — School Days — 
Ostracism for Anti-Slavery Views — Teaching School in Judea — 
A Year at Towanda — Admission to the Bar — Marriage— Re- 
moval to Meriden — A Lover of the Woods — Judea Revisited — 
The Adirondacks. 

FREDERICK W. GUNN, the "Master of the Gun- 
nery," well beloved by generations of schoolboys 
and revered by the elders, merits a place in this book for 
the noble influence he exerted on Orville Piatt's life. 
Although ten years the senior of the younger man, he 
was friend and comrade as well as teacher. No story 
of Washington and Litchfield County would approach 
completeness which failed to say something of this 
extraordinary man. He was a younger brother of that 
John Gunn who was associated with Daniel Piatt in 
Abolition activities and he was destined to be as stout 
an adversary of slavery as any of his elders. No 
more tender tribute to a friend was ever penned than 
the sketch which Senator Piatt contributed to a me- 
morial of Mr. Gunn printed in 1887. It reveals much 
of the inner life of both men and is significant of the 
influences that went to shape the character and career 
of the younger. 

' ' He was more to me than a teacher," writes the pupil 
grown old; "my love for him was the love one has for 
father, brother, and friend." 

13 



14 Orville H. Piatt 

Frederick W. Gunn was born in 1816 about a mile 
from Washington Green. He was the youngest of 
eight children, all of whom became identified with the 
Anti-Slavery cause. The eldest, John, "a man singu- 
larly gentle, open-hearted, simple, and honest, but 
made of the stuff we worship in heroes and martyrs," 
was conspicuous in the leadership of the little Abolition 
band and was identified closely with Daniel and Almyra 
Piatt. It has been said of him that "although by 
nature one of the most modest and quiet of men, and 
shrinking from public gaze, he surprised both friends 
and foes by becoming one of the boldest, sternest, and 
most aggressive champions of the slave." 

Frederick, the "Master of the Gunnery," entered 
Yale College in the Class of 1 83 7 , Among his classmates 
were Chief-Justice M. R. Waite, William M. Evarts, 
Edwards Pierrepont, and Benjamin Silliman. 

His scholarship was good but not conspicuous [says 
his pupil biographer in words that might well have been 
self-descriptive]. He was not a bookworm; not a plodder. 
The time and energy which, perhaps, otherwise applied, 
might have won him the first honors, were largely used 
in the study of literature and poetry. . . . Transferred 
to the city he lost none of his love for country sur- 
roundings. He excelled in the study of botany. He loved 
the freedom of the open fields — the solitude of the seashore. 
In those days as all through his later years, he was fond of 
hunting and fishing. He enjoyed such pastimes with the 
relish of the true hunter and angler, whose real pleasure is 
found, not in killing game and catching fish, but in the 
exhilaration which comes to one who roams alone the woods 
and fields, in the quiet peace of mind experienced when he 
wanders by the brookside, and watches the flow of the 
rippling water. , . . His ideal was manliness. His develop- 
ment of that ideal was along the line of physical, intellectual, 



Teacher and Pupil 15 

and sentimental growth. He cultivated muscle, health, 
imagination, taste, intellect! . . . His idea of education, 
acted upon in his own college experience as well as when 
he came to be a teacher, was the perfecting of a noble 
manhood — the creating of a noble life. 

After leaving college, he began teaching at the 
Academy in New Preston, and, in 1839, he opened his 
school in the Academy at Judea. It was here that 
Orville H. Piatt, who had begun his education in the 
Old Red Schoolhouse on the Green, first fell under his 
inspiring influence. Mr. Gunn's success at New Preston 
had given him prestige, and at the beginning his school 
was filled beyond its capacity. But a great change 
was at hand : 

His development had thus far been in the direction of 
mental and sentimental growth [says his biographer]. His 
brain had become keen and analytical; he was logical, 
and a dangerous antagonist in debate. He had cultivated 
a pure and elevated taste, and an admiration for the noble 
and heroic, but his moral nature as yet had had little to 
test it. Naturally of upright life, he had had little occasion 
to think of abstract principles or to study abstract ques- 
tions of duty. But a crisis was coming. Manliness, truth, 
principle, were words which were to have new meanings 
for him. Right was to become to him the touchstone of 
life. To follow duty wherever and however it seemed to 
lead was to be for him a new experience, and duty and 
right were to lead him into the face of trials, of difficulties, 
of opposition, of persecution, through detraction and abuse, 
such as we, with the lapse of these intervening years, can 
scarcely realize.^ 

« "It is not easy to sketch the Hfe of a friend whose memory we 
cherish as a rich legacy. For as we knew him through the medium 
of our love, as we perceived his admirable qualities through the 
lens of a silent sympathy, it is very natural that we should shrink 



1 6 Orville H. Piatt 

It was near the beginning of the fierce Anti-Slavery 
agitation. Frederick Gunn, convinced by the argu- 
ments of his brother John that slavery was wrong, 
became a leader on the Anti-Slavery side. His fear- 
lessness, his severity of attack, his ability of statement, 
and his force of argument marked him out for special 

from disclosing to others the estimate of his character we have 
thus acquired. We do not like to analyze his character; we prefer 
rather to regard it as a unit. It seems unnatural to weigh and 
compare its differing constituents, to question and decide which 
particular trait most endeared our friend to us, or made him most 
helpful to others; above all, the consciousness that we can never so 
describe him that he will appear to others as he did to us, and the 
certainty that our portrait will be sadly imperfect, make us feel 
at the outset that we may regret having attempted the work. And 
so I hesitate, almost fear, to attempt the story of Mr. Gunn's early 
life and struggles. He was more to me than a teacher; my love 
for him was the love one has for father, brother, and friend. To 
those who knew him as I knew him, all I can write will seem unap- 
preciative. To those who knew him but casually, it may, in some 
measure, set forth and account for his rare development of manhood 
and manly goodness. . . . 

" Mr. Gunn was a rarely developed man, possessing largely all 
those generous qualities and characteristics which inspire confidence 
and love in others. Keen and vigorous of intellect, he was tender 
and true of heart. He was proud, not haughty. His pride was that 
of conscious nobility, and rectitude. He loved God, loved man, 
loved truth; and he served God, served man, served truth. He 
hated evil, wrong, falseness, meanness, and he made war on them 
always. He was unflinching in his devotion to principle — uncom- 
promising in his conflict with the wrong. He was pure and virtu- 
ous in life, reverent toward goodness and purity, but contemptuous 
toward bigotry and shams. He had the courage of his convictions, 
and practised rigidly what he believed. He was generous in his 
sympathies, warm in his friendships, ardent in his love. There 
was no malice in his nature. Open and frank in his intercourse, 
helpful in conduct, his example and teaching were an inspiration. 
His great aim was to live a noble life himself, and aid others to 
live such a life. His ideal standard of living was more divine than 
human, and his struggle was to attain his ideal. He may have been 
faulty; who is perfect? He may have been harsh in his judgments 
at times; but it was not because his nature was harsh. He was 



Teacher and Pupil 17 

condemnation. He was not a church member, his 
manner was not reverential, he had httle regard for the 
outward formahties of the church, and therefore was 
the more easily branded an "infidel." The issue 
between him and the minister was well defined and 
undisguised. The minister proclaimed him a heretic. 
He proclaimed the minister a bigot and attacked what 
the minister preached as religion with all the weapons 
at his command. Argument, invective, ridicule, satire 
he used unsparingly. The church members and the 
whole community other than the Abolitionists sided 
with the minister. Mr. Gunn was stigmatized as an 
Abolitionist and an infidel — words of intense reproach, 
the import of which we now but feebly realize. 

The story of how the "Master of the Gunnery," 
after persecution and exile, established and maintained 
in Washington a school for boys which shed a beneficent 
influence of incalculable extent and power so that when 
he died in 1881 he was followed to the grave by such 
grief and blessings as followed Dr. Arnold of Rugby, 
belongs to other pages than these. Only that is writ- 
ten of him here which helps to interpret the wholesome 
and inspiring surroundings of Orville H. Piatt's early 
life ; and who can estimate the noble influence upon the 
mind of a clean and whole-hearted boy, with a natural 
love for w^oods, streams, and fields, exerted by close 



gentle and tender as a woman ; but in the championship of the weak 
he struck harder than he thought. He was unambitious, careless of 
worldly honors, indifferent to wealth or fame. Had he chosen he 
could have easily filled a larger place in the world's notice. He 
neither achieved nor sought success as the world measures success; 
but he realized the great aim of his life in that he lived and died 
a true man, and impressed on many lives the seal of a sterling 
manhood."— From Mr. Piatt's "Memorial" in The Master of the 
Gunnery. 



i8 Orville H. Piatt 

association with this open-minded, nature-loving, man- 
loving instructor of youth. 

Orville Piatt first became a pupil of Mr. Gunn's in 
1840 when he was thirteen years old; and during the 
next eight years he enjoyed the closest relations with 
his teacher. First he attended the Academy, near the 
Meeting- House, on the Green, and when one by one the 
church members and followers of Parson Hayes with- 
drew their children from the school, the son of Daniel 
Piatt, the Abolitionist, remained. 

At school, his favorite study was mathematics; but 
he was fond of ancient and modern history and of 
geography, and studied Latin, but not Greek. Pie is 
said by a school-fellow to have been "correct in his 
phrasing, accurate in pronunciation, and choice in his 
Endish." He never violated the school rules, and 
he was of a serious nature, bent on making the most of 
his opportunities. He joined in outdoor sports. At 
baseball he was a good runner and catcher, but "when 
it came to hitting the ball, he lunged at it with terrific 
force." In football he is described as a "towering, 
dominating figure. Sometimes he could be tripped or 
outgeneralled; but once under way, the ball in advance, 
he followed it up with tempestuous force." He could 
beat all the other boys at a standing jump and had a 
record of twelve feet to his credit. He is remembered 
as having always been fair and square in the school- 
boy games. "If he accidentally stepped on or rolled 
over anybody he was as sorry as his limping or disabled 
competitor could be." 

Through allegiance to an ideal, Mr. Gunn's first 
school in Judea was ruined. At the end of four years 
the number of his pupils was reduced to nine — all 
children of Abolitionists. Mr. Gunn was forbidden 



Teacher and Pupil 19 

the use of the Academy building, and moved his Httle 
school to the house of his sister, Mrs. Canfield, on the 
site of which the Gunnery now stands. In 1845, some 
friends in New Preston, who remembered his success 
there as a teacher and who sympathized with him in his 
persecution, determined to "show Judea that Mr. 
Gunn could teach school in New Preston even if he was 
an Abolitionist." They invited him to return and he 
did so. His enemies in Judea tried every device to 
prevent parents from sending their children to a school 
taught by a "heretic and an infidel," and some were 
dissuaded; but many Abolitionists from surrounding 
townS' sent their sons and daughters to New Preston 
and this made the school a success. 

Orville Piatt attended the school for three winters, 
living for two winters with Mr. Gunn. The third winter 
he himself taught at the schoolhouse on Christian 
Street, aptly named, according to tradition, because at 
one time every house on the street was owned by a 
professed Christian . For this he received eleven dollars 
a month and " boarded around " after the manner of 
the district school teacher of the day — making his head- 
quarters at the house of the chairman of the district 
committee who employed him, and who took him in 
when the family to which he happened to be assigned 
for a week were so poor he did not care to board with 
them. 

In 1847, Mr. Gunn abandoned New Preston, at the 
urgency of friends who had settled inTowanda, Pennsyl- 
vania. Towanda was the home of David Wilmot, the 
author of the Wilmot Proviso. The Abolition sentiment 
was strong and to be an Abolitionist did not subject 
one to reproach. He became principal of a large school 
there; but before leaving New Preston he persuaded 



20 



Orville H. Piatt 



young Piatt to accompany him as assistant. Mr. 
Piatt, then twenty years old, spent one winter at 
Towanda. It was an eventful winter for him, for it 
brought him in contact with the young woman who was 
to become his wife, and with whom he was destined to 
spend forty-three years of his life — Miss Annie Bull, the 
only daughter of one of the leading families of Towanda 
with whom Mr. Piatt made his home. They were 
married May 15, 1850. They had two sons, one of 
whom died in infancy. The other, James P. Piatt, is 
now a judge on the Federal bench. 

In the spring of 1848, Mr. Piatt returned to Judea, 
and began the study of the law. He had the privilege 
of reading under Gideon H. Hollister of Litchfield, one 
of the recognized legal authorities of the day. It was 
no child's play; for he was obliged to read Blackstone 
and the other standard works at home and then drive 
or walk over to Litchfield, twelve miles away, to recite 
to Mr. Hollister, whom he surprised one day by repeat- 
ing from memory the long opening chapterof Blackstone 
without a break. 

During the winter of 1848, he taught in the Academy 
on the Green and he seems to have eked out his salary 
as teacher by private instruction. The returns were 
not dazzling, if we may judge from the following 
receipted bill which has come down to us: 

Truman Woodruff, to O. H. Piatt, Dr., 

To tuition of John, 1 1 weeks $2.96 

Incidental expenses .372 



■33i 



Rec'd payment, March 2d, 1849. 

O. H. Platt. 



Teacher and Pupil 21, 

However, he was able to lay by a little money, and 
we find him in the spring abandoning this means of live- 
lihood and taking up his residence in Litchfield where 
he entered Mr. Hollister's office. In the spring of 1850 
he was admitted to the Litchfield County Bar and im- 
mediately went back to Towanda to be married. For 
a time after his marriage it was a question whether he 
would make his permanent home in Towanda or not. 
For six months he was in the office of Ulysses S. Mer- 
cur, afterwards Chief- Justice of the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania, and, at the end of that period, he was ad- 
mitted to practice in the Pennsylvania courts. The 
home call was too strong, however, and shortly after 
his admission to the Pennsylvania Bar he concluded to 
return to Connecticut. He hved with his father, while 
looking about the State to determine where he should 
settle as a lawyer. 

Bearing letters of recommendation from Senator 
Truman Smith and others, to Judge Eleazar K. Foster 
and James Donaghe, then Collector of Customs at New 
Haven, he sought their advice, and followed it by locat- 
ing at Meriden, a rising industrial town, twenty miles 
north of New Haven. On December i, 1850, he went 
to Meriden and engaged an office which had to be 
fitted up for him. While waiting for the office to be 
completed he returned to Judea, spending the winter 
with his father. He went to Meriden finally in the 
spring of 185 1, to begin the active practice of the law.^ 

» In the summer of 1902, in order that his granddaughter might 
know something of his early life, Mr. Piatt dictated the following, 
at Mrs. Piatt's request: "I was bom July 19, 1827, in the house 
which stood on the left-hand side of the road leading from Black- 
ville to Davies Hollow, some fifty rods beyond the old Samuel 
Baldwin place. Only the cellar remains, and that is filled with 
small trees which have grown since the house was torn down. The 



22 Orville H. Piatt 

So he left the haunts of his boyhood to enter the ac- 
tivities of the world; but the time never came that his 
heart did not turn toward the familiar places in Judea. 
After all, that was his home; he loved to dwell upon 
its beauties and charm, and many a time his wandering 

property is now owned by Charles C. Ford, and with his permission 
I have transplanted a young ash, which is growing finely on my 
lawn at Kirby Comer. The bam formerly connected with the 
house is still standing. The road on which the homestead stood 
was known as ' Sabbaday Lane, ' possibly, because it led to the 
First Episcopal Church in Washington, which stood in Davies 
Hollow near the little old burying-ground. 

"My father was Daniel G. Piatt, and my mother was Almyra 
Hitchcock Piatt, whose family lived in Bethlehem. When I was 
bom my father was a farmer and taught school in winter. I 
remeniber he took me with him as a child, one day, to the school- 
house which stood on the Canfield place nearly opposite the entrance 
to Arthur Woodruflf's lot. This building was removed to the site 
now occupied by the town hall on the Green, and was fitted up and 
became what was known as the 'Old Red School House.' 

"When I was perhaps two years old, my father moved to what 
is now the Aspinwall place, the property then being owned by the 
daughters of Matthew Mitchell, who was, I think, a brother of 
Elnathan Mitchell. They lived in South Britain, and my father 
rented the farm from them on shares. It extended on the north 
to the road leading to Blackville, known as 'Goose Hill, ' embracing 
all the land south of a line drawn from there to the road running 
north from Powell G. Seeley's, being bounded on the north by 
Nelson and Charles Ford's land. It also embraced the lots south 
of the Aspinwall place (called in my boyhood the ' Punishment 
Lots '), as well as the land owned now by Charles Daignan, on which 
is situated the reservoir from which water is brought to the Green. 

"I have sometimes wondered whether the 'hills standing round 
about it ' made our forefathers name our part of the town Judea — 
it looks down on the beautiful valley of the Shepaug, and the whole 
country is full of running brooks. The first time I went fishing, I 
was about four years old — my tackle was a common string, with a 
bent up pin for hook, and I landed one small shiner, as Miss Julia 
Canfield sat beside me on the bank. 

" I lived at the Aspinwall place, working on the farm (after I was 
old enough) until the year 1847, ^^^ first attended school in the 
Old Red School House on the Green, but cannot tell whether my 



Teacher and Pupil 23 

feet strayed back to the Litchfield hills, where every 
house and every field had its reminiscence. Above all 
things he liked to roam the woods, and he was never 
so happy as when tramping his favorite trails and 
whipping his favorite streams. He was one of the most 

first teacher was Antoinette Judson, or Sophia Turner, who became 
Mrs. Preston Hollister. I know it was taught by a Mr. Northrup 
also, who came from New Milford. Later, I went to the Academy 
which stood on the rock north of the town hall, taught by a Mr. 
Jennings and subsequently by Mr. Gunn. The Academy, under 
Mr. Gunn's tuition, dwindled in attendance on account of the 
Abolition troubles, until finally he did not attempt to teach in 
the Academy building, but had a school in Mr. Lewis Canfield's 
house, where the Gunnery now stands, living there with his sister, 
Mrs. Canfield. The schoolroom was small, and was entered from 
the hall by the front door as it now exists. I think there were 
only eleven pupils. I do not recall all of them — they were mostly 
sons and daughters of pronounced Abolitionists. 

"After a while Mr. Gunn abandoned the project of a school in his 
sister's house, and taught, for possibly three winters, the Academy 
in New Preston which I attended, living with him at Mrs. Cogswell's 
for two winters, the third, teaching at the schoolhouse on Christian 
Street, at eleven dollars per month, boarding around. Abiel 
Lemon, who employed me, was chairman of the district committee, 
and his house was headquarters, i. c, when the people were so 
poor I did not wish to board with them, he took me in. 

"The next fall, 1847, I went with Mr. Gunn to Towanda, Penn- 
sylvania, as his assistant in a large school of which he had become 
principal. Returning in the spring I commenced the study of 
law with Gideon H. Hollister of Litchfield, going up there to recite 
to Mr. Hollister. 

"In the winter of 1848, I taught in the Academy on the Green, 
Mr. Gunn still being in Towanda. The following spring I went to 
Litchfield permanently, entering Mr. HoUister's office, which was a 
brick building on the east side of South Street; Judge Seymour had 
an office in the same building. 

" I was admitted to the Litchfield County Bar in the early spring 
of 1850, and immediately went back to Towanda, where I was 
married on May 15 th of that year. 

" I was six months in the office of Ulysses S. Mercur, who was 
subsequently Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. 

"It was a question whether I would settle there or not. At the 



24 Orville H. Piatt 

skilful fishermen anywhere to be found. He knew the 
haunts and habitsof all fish; knew just howto lure them, 
what bait to use in varying circumstances. Yet it 
made little difference to him whether he was lucky in 
his sport or not. He went fishing for the sake of going, 
for the pleasure of being in the woods, of building a 
fire outdoors to cook his primitive meal of bacon and 
toasted bread and coffee ; of loafing under the trees and 
by the brooks. He was versed in the lore of the woods. 
He loved to stroll through them slowly, picking the 
leaves and blossoms here and there, examining them 
and classifying them in his mind. He knew every 
tree, every shrub, and every flower, the note of every 
bird, the ways of every wild thing, animate or not. A 
little later in life the call of the forest carried him 
farther away from civilization to the Adirondacks and 
to fishing grounds in Canada. In the Adirondacks, 
near Long Lake, he built him a shanty which he called 
a camp, under the shadow of Mt. Seward, a seven-mile 
row to the post-office, and an all-day ride by buckboard 
to the nearest railroad. To this spot, for many years 
up to the last summer of his life, he hurried just as soon 
as he could get away from the grinding work of legis- 
lation. There he lived as close to nature as he could 
get. Five years of his life, he said once near the end 
of it, he had spent outdoors in the woods. In these 
surroundings he passed happy days. The guides all 
loved him as one of their own. No matter how ill or 

end of six months I was admitted to practice in the courts of that 
State, and then concluded to return to Connecticut, bringing my 
wife with me. My father in the meantime had moved from the 
Aspinwall place to the house which he had built upon a small farm 
on the Litchfield road, next beyond what is now known as the 
'Mason place,' and I went there and began to look about that I 
might decide where to settle as a lawyer in Connecticut." 




o 
o 

IT 
CD 

h 
D 

o 

^- 

z 
o 
i- 
o 

z 

X 
CO 



Teacher and Pupil 25 

useless he might feel on leaving the Capital, no sooner 
would he approach the familiar scenes than his spirits 
would begin to revive ; and when he reached the camp 
and the familiar shanty he seemed to shed like an 
uncomfortable coat the melancholy with which at such 
seasons he was too frequently oppressed. With Charlie 
Long, Steve Lamos, or Charlie Sabbatis, the guides, he 
would fall at once unconsciously into the vernacular, 
asking for all the trifling history of the little community 
in the woods and swapping stories and experiences with 
as keen a zest as though that were the only existence 
he ever knew. He would hardly unpack his baggage 
before he was swinging through the forest with sweeping 
strides as happy and hopeful as a boy. No matter 
how much under the weather he might have been there 
was no further need for doctors or attendants. He was 
back with nature once more, communing on terms of 
equality with the denizens of the wild. 

Mr. Piatt was twice married. The wife of his vouth 
was for many years an invalid, requiring his constant 
watchfulness and care, and to the last she was sustained 
and comforted by a considerate, sympathetic devotion 
such as is rarely seen. When she died in November, 
1893, he felt as though the bottom had dropped out of 
his world. 

Forty-three years of married life have passed into 
memory [he wrote nearly a year later to a boyhood 
friend]. It has been, still is, hard to accustom myself to 
the change, hard to catch on again, or to feel that any- 
thing is left for me but waiting for my time to come. I 
try to meet things as a courageous man should, but I 
cannot get above the feeling that I must plod on alone 
henceforth. 

The next years of his life were the most gloomy that 



26 Orville H. Piatt 

he had eVer known, and nothing but the necessity for 
constant attention to his duties in the Senate carried 
him through. Then came a change which broadened 
the current of the stream. When he was studying law 
in Litchfield, one of his friends and counsellors was 
Truman Smith, for many years in Congress, and United 
States Senator from 1849 to 1854. A daughter, Jeannie 
P. Smith, had known him then and looked up to him 
from a distance as a young man grown. They lost sight 
of each other, one wedded, going to Meriden, the other 
to Washington D. C, and afterwards to Stamford. She 
became the wife and then the widow of George A. Hoyt, 
a successful man of business and affairs. Later they 
were brought together again. For several years they 
had neighboring camps in the Adirondacks, and the two 
families became devoted friends. She was a woman 
of travel, and culture, and familiar with pubHc affairs, 
and it was not strange that they should be drawn to 
one another. On April 29, 1897, they were married and 
the new alliance, coming at the dawn of a period when 
great and absorbing issues were to compel his attention, 
was of a value to the Senator which it is not easy now 
to calculate. To the end he rested unquestioningly 
and with a feeling of relief upon her cheerful counsel and 
assistance. One service she rendered for which those 
who cared for him must ever be grateful. She built 
him a house at Kirby Corner near one of his favorite 
spots in Judea. The two entered into the joy of plan- 
ning and furnishing it with as much delight as though 
they were to have unending years of pleasure there. 
At Kirby Comer in the last stage he passed days of rare 
contentment and there he welcomed the end. 



CHAPTER III 

MERIDEN 

Meriden and the First Church — Twenty-eight Years a Practising 
Lawyer — A Political Organizer — Judge of Probate — Chairman 
of American and Republican State Committees — Secretary 
of State — A Member of the General Assembly — Speaker of 
the House — "Picture Piatt" — State's Attorney— The Bible 
Class — Masonry — The Metabetchouan Fishing and Game Club 
— Interest in Business Development — Financial Reverses. 

WHEN the young lawyer arrived in Meriden in the 
spring of 1851, he found a thriving town of 
3,000 people. He lived there twenty-eight years, be- 
fore he was sent to the Senate ; and up to the day of his 
death, it was his legal residence and voting place, 
although his winters were passed in Washington and 
his summers either in the Adirondack woods or in the 
quiet seclusion of Judea. 

Wherever he might go, his interest in the progress of 
Meriden went with him. There was the home he had 
earned by years of practice at the law; there was the 
church of which he early became a member ; there were 
the friends of his young manhood who had helped him 
to his first political success. He saw the village 
multiply in population and industry almost beyond 
the recognition of his early days, and the time never 
came when he did not look forward with pleasure to 
the home-coming at the close of each session of 

Congress. 

27 



28 Orville H. Piatt 

His law office at first was on Colony Street, in a brick 
building owned by Almon Andrews, since destroyed 
by fire and rebuilt and now owned by the Grand 
Army of the Republic. 

When I first went to Meriden [Mr. Piatt said three 
years before his death] I 'boarded with Doctor Hough, 
whose house stood upon the ground now occupied by the 
First National Bank; afterwards, I boarded with Mr. 
Morgan, and later went to housekeeping. The first law 
business I did was to draw five warranty deeds for Mr. 
Andrews, of whom I rented my office, for which I received 
one dollar and twenty-five cents. 

He thus began humbly like any other briefless young 
lawyer entering as a stranger into the life of a small 
though busy community. For the first year or so 
cases were few and unremunerative. He had so much 
time on his hands that he was always available for the 
recreations of the village, and ready to accept an invi- 
tation to a game of checkers or chess. Many a day he 
would shut up his office and go fishing. Some of his 
old associates say he would do this even though he 
happened to be in the midst of a case; but a better 
version seems to be that he did not have enough cases 
to interfere with his fishing. ^ 

1 In the early years of his life in Meriden, Mr. Piatt with a number 
of other young professional and business men of the county or- 
ganized a baseball club which used to play on the old hospital 
grounds at New Haven. It is said to have been the first attempt 
in the State of Connecticut to play the national game under sys- 
tematic rules. The club was divided into two nines which played 
against each other two or three times a week, and in the list of 
the players appear names which later became well known. One 
was N. D. Sperry, Secretary of the Republican National Committee 
at the time of Lincoln's first election, a financial backer of Ericsson 
in the building of the Monitor, and for many years a member of 
Congress. Another was Alfred H. Terry, afterwards Major-General 



Meriden 29 

But it did not take long to establish friendly relations 
with the substantial citizens of the village, and within 
two years of his arrival he stood so well that he was 
elected Jud^e of Probate, a position which he occupied 
from 1853 to 1856. Whatever may have been his early 

Terry, the hero of Fort Fisher, and a famous Indian fighter. Fifty 
years later on the occasion of a reception tendered Mr. Sperry at 
New Haven, Mr. Piatt wrote from his country home: 

" Washington, Connecticut, 
September 29, 1903. 
"Dear Mr. Sperry: 

" I am invited to come down and attend the reception to be given 
you on the fifteenth of October and have been wondering what I 
can say about you. It occurs to me that I would like to tell the 
story of our baseball game, and I wish that you would write me the 
names of as many of those who took part as you can recollect. I 
am unable to recall all of them for certain, but will give you those 
I can. 

" There must have been two nines — eighteen in all: 
Yourself, Myself, 

General Terry, Harry Lewis, 

Mont Woodward, J. B. Candee, 

William E. Downs, Arthur D. Osborne, 

Dave Peck, Clark from Hamden, 

Dwight (was it not?). Tall man, captain of Blues or 

Greys, whose name escapes 
me. 
"Possibly Kellogg was there; I rather think he was; perhaps 
Wooster, Theodore Buell, and Major Bissell were, and I think 
John Woodruff was. 

" Was Root, of the clock shop, one of them, and John C. Hollister 
another? 

" If I am right about these, we have the eighteen, but as I cannot 
be positive, I wish that you would put on your thinking cap and 
complete the two nines. The game was played on the lot where 
the New Haven hospital now stands, was it not? 

"Do you remember who were pitchers and who were catchers, 
or anything else about it which would be interesting to such a 
gathering?" 

Mr. Sperry helped to complete the nines for him as follows: 
"The tall man you mention must have been Captain Charles 



30 Orville H. Piatt 

disposition there is no doubt about the strictness with 
which he attended to business from the time he first 
entered pubhc office; and the habits of those days 
remained with him to the end, — habits of patient, 
scrupulous, almost plodding industry. He began im- 
mediately to take an active part in politics. An 
Abolition Whig and Free-Soiler — his first vote had 
been cast for Van Buren in 1848 — he undertook the 
work of extending the Abolition sentiment in the 
community. The lessons instilled in him in boyhood 
by the little band of friends of freedom in Judea were 
not forgotten. His arrival in Meriden almost coincided 
with the inception of the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, 
which colored national politics for the next decade, 
and it was inevitable that one so trained and so en- 
dowed should participate to the best of his endeavor 
in the political activities of his limited environment.^ 

T. Candee, the father of Everett Candee of the Street Railway 
Company. On the whole as I think the matter over perhaps 
Kellogg was a member. Wooster was not. Theodore Buell was 
not. Major Bissell was not. John Woodruff used to be with us 
once in a while and perhaps Root, of the clock shop, but they were 
not regular members. John C. HoUister was a member. " 

» The responsibilities of active political organization, which were 
undertaken elsewhere by the Free-Soil party, were assumed in 
Connecticut largely by the American party, which in the early 
days embodied the living Anti-Slavery spirit of the State. Mr. 
Piatt accordingly became identified with the American movement, 
together with N. D. Sperry and a few other earnest young men who 
afterwards figured prominently in Republican politics. He became 
Chairman of the State Committee of the American party prior to 
1856 and retained the chairmanship in 1856, working in harmony 
with the Republican State Committee when the State chose Fremont 
electors. A little later he became Chairman of the Republican State 
Committee and he was Secretary of State during the administration 
of Governor Holley in 1857-8, having previously served as clerk 
of the State Senate in 1855-6. 

To Philip E. Howard of Philadelphia, who inquired about the 



Meriden 31 

From that time until his election to the Senate, he 
was one of the most effective party workers in the State, 
and one of the best political organizers. He had a 
rare faculty of quiet control, and then, as later, his word 
went far. The story of his slow but steady growth 
in political favor during the twenty-eight years of his 
stay in Meriden, of the gradual expansion of his reputa- 
tion and acquaintance to county and state limits, 
found its parallel on a national scale between the time 
of his election to the Senate and the enactment of the 
Piatt amendment. From first to last, without self- 
advertising or spectacular devices, his development 



connection of Henry Clay Trumbull with Connecticut politics 
before the war, Mr. Piatt wrote on September i, 1904 : " I remember 
the fact of Mr. Trumbull's activity in those times; remember to 
have heard him make political speeches, and some of the anecdotes 
with which they were interspersed, but my personal intercourse 
and friendship for him dates from rather a later period. I was 
originally a ' Know-Nothing' and belonged to what was called the 
'American party,' so that at the organization of the Republican 
party the work was taken up by others. We supported Fremont 
with all our might in 1856. I had been Chairman of the American, 
or American-Union party, as we called ourselves prior to 1856, 
and perhaps in 1856 we had a double organization — I cannot 
remember — that is, two committees — and it is possible that I still 
retained the chairmanship of the American party in 1856, working 
in harmony with the State Committee of the Republican party, then 
just organized. We carried Connecticut in 1856 for Fremont, and 
I know that Mr. Trumbull was very active at that time. I cannot 
make it seem true that he was ever a member of a State committee 
of which I was chairman. After 1858 I was Chairman of the Re- 
publican State Committee for two or three years. Unfortunately, 
I have no memoranda or data from which I could refresh my recol- 
lection. My memory is of that peculiar kind that when a particular 
piece of work is accomplished, I put it one side and forget all about 
it until something occurs which makes it necessary for me to recall 
it. Others seem to have memory which retains the details of every- 
thing in which they have been engaged, or with which they have 
been connected." 



32 Orville H. Piatt 

was constantly upward and outward. Judge of 
Probate for Meriden; Clerk of State Senate; Chairman 
of American and Republican State committees; Secre- 
tary of State; member of Senate; member of State 
House of Representatives; Speaker of House of Repre- 
sentatives; State's Attorney for New Haven; United 
States Senator — the precise dates do not so much 
matter. 

It was during his term as State Senator in 1 86 1-2 
that an incident occurred which brought him for the 
moment into a prominence which may not have been 
altogether agreeable. There was in Connecticut a 
pervasive Copperhead sentiment at the beginning of 
the War, just as there had been a pro-slavery sentiment 
there during the Kansas-Nebraska struggle, when one 
Connecticut Senator, Isaac Toucey, voted with the 
Democrats of the South against Salmon P. Chase's 
amendment to Douglas's Squatter Sovereignty bill: 
"Under which, the people of the Territory, through 
their appropriate representatives, may, if they see fit, 
prohibit the existence of slavery therein." Some of 
the leading Democrats of the State loudly vociferated 
their lack of sympathy with the steps taken to save 
the Union. Wihiam W. Eaton announced that, if 
any Massachusetts troops crossed Connecticut, they 
would have to do it over his dead body. One of the 
most prominent of the Copperheads was a former 
Governor of the State, Thomas H. Seymour. So far 
had the declarations of these men spread, that friends 
of the Union began to question whether a false impres- 
sion would not go out to the country of the feeling of 
the State. Mr. Piatt was one of the younger Senators, 
fired with the zeal of early convictions brought to white 
heat in the furnace of war. He felt that something 



Meriden ;^^ 

should be done to emphasize the loyalty of Connecticut, 
and — whether after consultation with others is not 
known — he introduced a resolution reciting the cir- 
cumstances and providing that the portraits of Gover- 
nor Seymour and Governor Toucey, which hung in the 
chamber with those of other Governors, should be turned 
to the wall. The resolution was adopted; some one 
dubbed the author of it "Picture Piatt," and thus he 
was called for many years by the opposition press in 
the State. The incident he rarely referred to in after 
years, and the details of it seem to have passed out of 
his mind; but he felt that his action was fully justified. ^ 
One of his earliest steps after establishing his home 
in Meriden, was to unite with the First Congregational 
Church. He continued this association until his death, 
although in the later years his connection was, neces- 
sarily, not active. He was a deacon of the church until 
he left for Washington, D. C. For a long time he con- 
ducted a Bible class, which was regarded as one of 
the institutions of the place, and to which many of the 
principal men and women of the town belonged. His 
teachings were marked by earnestness and common- 
sense, and some of his pupils say his exposition of the 
Scriptures often seemed inspired. He had no use for 
cant. His son recalls that once when he was home 
from college he dropped into his father's office, and 
they started for a walk. As they passed the church, 
evangelistic services were going on, and the father said, 
"Let 's go in." The evangelist was exhorting with 

« " I think it was Thomas H. Seymour whose portrait was removed 
from the Senate chamber on my motion — that is my recollection 
of it, — and that years afterwards, when the War was over, it was 
brought back. The Democrats have never forgiven me for it and 
never will, and yet I think it was an entirely justifiable action." — 
Letter of O. H. Piatt to A. H. Byington, January 29, 1903. 
3 



34 Orville H. Piatt 

great fervor, calling down the terrors of eternal punish- 
ment ; after he had been laying on the scourge for some 
time, he came down among the congregation, and 
started straight down the aisle to where the elder 
Piatt was sitting at the head of a pew, with his legs 
crossed as usual. Throwing his arm over Mr. Piatt's 
shoulder he asked, "My brother, are you a Christian?" 
The future Senator looked up slowly, without uncrossing 
his legs, and barely unclosing his lips — "If what you 
have been telling us is true about what is necessary to 
be a Christian and what is not," he said deliberately, 
"I don't think I am!" 

Some of his most agreeable associations with Meriden 
grew out of his interest in Masonry, He was an early 
member of Meridian Lodge, No. 77, which dated from 
about the time of his arrival in the town, and later 
joined in the institution of St. Elmo Commandery, 
No. 9, K. T. Most of his closest friendships had their 
beginning there, and throughout his life he always 
made a point of being in Meriden if possible at the 
ceremonies on Good-Friday when his old companions 
got together. He delivered addresses on the fiftieth 
anniversary of Meridian Lodge and the twenty-fifth 
anniversary of St. Elmo Commandery, which bear 
the marks of careful preparation, and disclose a deep 
affection for the order to which he belonged. 

Another connection dating from early days in Meri- 
den was his membership in the Metabetchouan Fishing 
and Game Club, which had a fishing preserve in Canada 
comprising two hundred square miles of territory. He 
originally leased the preserve, as he used to explain, 
"in the days when I was young and foolish." He soon 
found that he could not get there often and that it 
was more than he could afford to keep up. So some of 



?:!Sl*" ^^^'P^^^^-. 



T:..,.,nK<r'-- 




A FLY-CASTING RAPID OF THE SHEPAUG RIVER 



Meriden 35 

his friends took it off his hands, and formed a club, 
building a clubhouse in the unbroken forest, with 
camps on the lakes and rivers. Next to the Litchfield 
hills and the Adirondacks, he liked to go there, though 
it rarely happened that he could get so far away. 

He was deeply concerned in the business develop- 
ment of his town. He was forever urging the advan- 
tage of establishing new industries, and this interest 
of his resulted not long before his election to the Senate 
in the one great financial setback of his life. A number 
of his local friends undertook to establish a cutlery 
concern and he became the counselling spirit in the 
enterprise, although he had little pecuniary interest in 
it. He worked hard to get it started, and the pro- 
moters came to him to go on their notes. He accom- 
modated them without thinking how much paper he 
was putting his name to and got in beyond his depth. 
The concern failed and he found himself involved for 
nearly $25,000. He turned over all his own property 
and part of his wife's property to the creditors of the 
failed concern. While he was in the worst of his 
trouble he received from his brother Simeon, who was 
a farmer in Litchfield County, a good-sized check with 
the laconic memorandum: "Orville, use this." He 
returned the check with an equally laconic note : ' ' Much 
obliged, Simeon, but I got myself into this mess, and I 
shall get out of it." But he never did quite get out of 
it. He went ahead strictly paying every dollar, giving 
his notes where he could not pay in cash, and taking 
them up as he found himself able to do so, but he 
carried the burden up to the day of his death, and some 
of the notes were cancelled only when it came to the 
settlement of his estate. 

He was not a jury lawyer. He confined himself 



36 Orville H. Piatt 

almost entirely to patent, corporation, and real-estate 
law. Until 1875, he was alone in his office. Then he 
took into partnership his son James, recently graduated, 
and for many years the old sign, "O. H.& J. P. PL ATT," 
remained on the office door. At the time of his election 
to the Senate, his practice was the most extensive in 
Meriden, and almost all the important manufacturing 
concerns in the town were among his clients. Every 
one had confidence in him. Every one was familiar 
with his tall figure sauntering up the street and felt 
free to go to him for help or sympathy. He was com- 
monly known as "O. H." and few took the pains to 
call him by any other name. 

The years of his stay in Meriden were not eventful, 
but they served to give him an acquaintance through- 
out the State which proved of value when he came be- 
fore the Legislature for election to the Senate. He was 
called a good campaign speaker, and was in demand 
for political occasions in his own town and in others, so 
that people got in the habit of associating his name with 
Republican affairs. It was known among his friends 
that he had only one ambition. His service as Secre- 
tary of State in 1858, Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives in 1867, and State's Attorney for New 
Haven between 1877 and 1879, came along in the 
ordinary course of politics. He could have been chosen 
Governor and might easily have been elected to Congress, 
but he did not care for either place. There was only 
one political office he wanted and that was the United 
States Senatorship. He thought that with his tempera- 
ment and training he could do better work in the Senate 
than anywhere else, if he should ever have the opportun- 
ity. His chance came at last in the fall of 1878. For 
several years Connecticut had been in the control of 



Meriden 37 

the Democratic party. W. W. Eaton, the "peace 
Democrat" of Civil War days, and William H.Barnum, 
afterwards Chairman of the Democratic National Com- 
mittee, represented the State in the Senate, having 
taken the places made vacant by the death of Senators 
Buckingham and Ferry in 1875. Barnum's term was 
to expire on March 4, 1879, and the election of a 
Republican Legislature in 1878 opened the way for a 
Republican successor. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MIDNIGHT CAUCUS 

A Skilfully Conducted Canvass — The Midnight Caucus — Election 
to the Senate — Newspaper Criticism — Reception at Meriden. 

THERE is no more interesting chapter in the poHtical 
history of Connecticut than the story of the 
campaign for the Senatorship which culminated in the 
famous midnight caucus of January 16-17, 1879, and 
the selection of Mr. Piatt as the Republican nominee. 
In general estimation, Gen. Joseph R. Hawley was 
easily the leading candidate, and outside the State it 
seems to have been assumed that he would be successful. 
He had acquired a wide reputation for independence and 
courage, was the one distinctly national character in 
the State, and was understood in some way to represent 
popular sentiment as against the scheming of profes- 
sional politicians. He had a splendid record for bravery 
in the Civil War, to which he was recognized as one 
of the State's most notable contributions. He had 
been Governor of the State, Permanent Chairman of the 
Republican National Convention in 1868, a Presidential 
Elector in the same year. President of the Centennial 
Commission at Philadelphia in 1876. At the election 
of 1878, he had been chosen a member of the House of 
Representatives for the second time, after an interval 
of several years, having served one term in 187 1 and 
1872, and having twice suffered defeat. He was the 

38 



The Midnight Caucus 39 

editor of the Hartford Courant, a strongly appealing 
personality both in the State and out. 

Marshall Jewell likewise had a reputation extending 
beyond the limits of the State, of which he had been 
Governor for three terms. As Minister to Russia, and 
Postmaster-General under President Grant, as a con- 
spicuous figure in Republican national conventions, 
as a member of the Republican National Committee, 
of which he became Chairman in the following year, 
he had many friends and adherents. He was strong 
especially among the active political workers, and, 
being regarded as their candidate, suffered accordingly. 

Henry B. Harrison was one of the best-known lawyers 
in the State, frequently mentioned for important office, 
and was recognized as a high-minded man, from whom 
much was to be expected. Into this group of eminent 
men, the modest Meriden lawyer ventured to intrude 
himself as a competitor for the highest honor in the 
gift of the State. He had seemingly few qualities to 
commend him to the Legislature in preference to any 
one of the others. He was known, it is true, as a 
competent lawyer, as a political worker and organizer 
of proved astuteness, as an efficient public servant in 
the various positions in which he had served, and as a 
citizen of sterling worth; but it may be doubted, when 
his candidacy was announced, whether there were 
many who imagined he would be a serious factor, 
much less that he could secure the prize. He had one 
advantage which those who interested themselves in 
his candidacy regarded as a political asset. He had 
no enemies and nowhere in the State was there a 
politician of consequence who did not have a kindly 
feeling for him. Though he was the first choice of 
few, he was acceptable as a second choice to many. 



40 Orville H. Piatt 

Moreover, his friends figured that either of the two 
leading candidates, Hawley and Jewell, both living 
in Hartford, would prefer to see the Senatorship 
go to some one outside of Hartford if unable to get it 
himrelf. There was to be another vacancy at the end 
of two years, when the term of Senator Eaton expired, 
and the election of a Hartford man to the existing 
vacancy would be a serious handicap to any Hartford 
candidate in 1881. The nucleus of Mr. Piatt's support 
was in his own town of Meriden, with its three repre- 
sentatives in the Legislature, H. Wales Lines in the 
Senate, and Samuel Dodd and James P. Piatt in the 
House. A campaign committee was organized, con- 
sisting of H. Wales Lines, Charles L. Rockwell, Judge 
Levi E. Coe, John W. Coe, and William F. Graham. 
Friends of the candidate were assigned each to canvass 
a county in the State, while a score or more other 
Meriden men volunteered to help by visiting other 
towns and interviewing members-elect to the General 
Assembly. It was the plan of the little band of cam- 
paigners not to antagonize any of the other candidates, 
to stimulate and extend the friendly feeling already 
existing toward Mr. Piatt in all parts of the State, to 
make him the second choice of as many members-elect 
as possible, so that when the time came for either 
Hawley or Jewell supporters to look for another candi- 
date, they would naturally turn to Piatt. Thus his 
canvass progressed unobtrusively, but with gradually 
accumulating interest, until a few days before the time 
for the Republican caucus. By that time the com- 
mittee had some twenty-five votes on which they 
thought they could count — at least for sympathetic 
support, and friends of other candidates began to 
figure on the Piatt following as something to be seriously 



The Midnight Caucus 41 

considered. At the beginning of the canvass, Mr. 
Piatt had instructed his managers that they should 
make no trades, bargains, or combines of any kind with 
any one. Those instructions were faithfully carried 
out. A few days before the caucus, however, some of 
Mr. Piatt's friends became anxious. There were rumors 
of bargains and agreements. One proposition was 
made, that the Piatt support should go to one of the 
other candidates on condition that Mr. Piatt should be 
chosen Senator two years later; in the meantime, the 
son James Piatt to be appointed judge on the State 
bench, which was his ambition. All these suggestions 
were rejected, but word was carried to the candidate 
of what was going on, with a suggestion that he ought 
to be in Hartford. A few hours before the caucus, 
Mr. Lines, the Chairman of the Piatt Campaign Com- 
mittee, received the following dispatch at Hartford: 

New Haven, Connecticut, 
January 14th. 

To Honorable H. Wales Lines, 

Senator Sixth District. 
My duties here make it impossible for me to give direction 
or even thought to the senatorial matter. I leave it 
entirely with you and the Meriden representatives, with 
these suggestions: Make no combinations or bargains, and 
entertain no proposals for anything. Let no friend of mine 
disparage any other candidate. Put the argument solely 
on what you may think of me, my ability to represent the 
State, and the best interests of the Republican party. 

O. H. Platt. 

The message was hardly needed, for it was in line with 
what Mr. Piatt's managers had understood his wishes 
to be. It was not made public until some time after 



42 Orville H. Piatt 

the caucus, and then it helped to contribute to the 
satisfaction with which the people of the State were 
learning to contemplate the outcome of the contest. 

The caucus began at eight o'clock and remained 
continually in session until 2:27 the next morning. 
Interest was intense. Former speaker Bugbee of 
Killingly was made chairman because his preference 
was unknown. Hawley's friends were anxious for 
nominating speeches; but supporters of the other 
candidates at a meeting before the caucus decided 
that no speeches should be made, and their wishes 
prevailed. On the first ballot, which is designated 
in the newspaper reports as "informal" but which 
is said by some who were there not to have dif- 
fered in character from the others, Hawley had 49 
votes; Jewell 35; Piatt 24; Harrison 14; W. T. Minor 
of Stamford 14; P. T. Barnum 10. Piatt's strong 
showing on this ballot was a surprise to all except 
his friends. It was known that there were three, and 
probably five who would stand by him until his election 
or defeat. Three of these came from Meriden. There 
is some question as to the identity of the others; but 
honors lie with two of the following names: Senator 
Lyman W. Coe and Representative Bradley R. 
Agard of Torrington, and Representative Henry Gay 
of Winchester. Some who were primarily for Piatt 
favored Hawley as second choice and when they saw 
the Jewell vote increasing on subsequent ballots they 
became alarmed lest Jewell should be nominated and 
transferred their votes to Hawley. So it came about 
that as ballot after ballot was taken, the Piatt showing 
fell steadily till, on the eighth formal ballot, it reached 
the dauntless five, and there for three ballots it stuck, 
while the Harrison strength slowly grew, and Hawley's 



The Midnight Caucus 43 

on the ninth and tenth ballots bounded to seventy-one, 
within five votes of the nominating point. 

On the tenth formal ballot, Hawley had 71 votes, 
Jewell 51, Harrison 23, and Piatt 5. On the eleventh 
ballot, Hawley had 64, Jewell 53, Harrison 21, and Piatt 
10. From that time the Piatt strength showed a 
gradual increase, Harrison's fell away, the Jewell 
votes disintegrated ballot after ballot, and the Hawley 
support fluctuated. It was evident that the Jewell 
managers, at the head of whom was William H. Hay- 
ward of Colchester, were trying to effect combinations 
first with the Harrison, and then with the Piatt contin- 
gents, so as to prevent the success of Hawley, who was 
approaching dangerously close to the nomination. 
The game was skilfully played. Enough votes were 
thrown to one candidate and another to sustain the 
contest, but the transfer of strength was so gradual 
as not to precipitate a rush to Hawley. At midnight, 
the nineteenth ballot stood: Hawley 60; Jewell 42; 
Piatt 25; Harrison 16; S. W. Kellogg 5; Barnum 2. 
So it went on for eleven more ballots, when, for the first 
time, Piatt forged ahead to second place: Hawley 63; 
Piatt 39; Jewell t,"]; Harrison 10. The thirty-third 
ballot gave Hawley 66; Piatt 61; Jewell 18; Harrison 7. 
On the thirty-fourth ballot, Piatt leaped to first place, 
with 74 votes; Hawley 72; Jewell 3; Harrison 2. He 
gained one vote from Hawley on the thirty-fifth ballot, 
so that he was within one vote of the nomination, and 
on the thirty-sixth ballot the longed for vote came.^ 
Just where it came from has ever since been a source 
of friendly dispute among the politicians of the State. 
There are living to-day at least a dozen men, each of 
whom can relate with circumstantial detail how it 

> The full record of the balloting in the midnight caucus follows: 



44 



Orville H. Piatt 



happened — how he dehvered that missing vote. It 
is no part of this history to settle the dispute, ahhough 
one incident may be recorded. That Marcus E. 
Baldwin of Woodbridge was one of those who cast his 
vote for Piatt for the first time on the decisive ballot, 
appears from the proceedings of the meeting at Meriden 
held the night after Mr. Piatt's election by the Legisla- 
ture, when Mr. Baldwin was introduced facetiously, by 
Senator Lines, as " one of the men who, when he came 



INFORMAL Ballot 



Joseph R. Hawley, 
Marshall Jewell, 
Orville H. Piatt, 
Henry B. Harrison, 
William T. Minor, 
P. T. Bamum, 
Charles B. Andrews, 
Benjamin Douglas, 



Hartford, 

Hartford, 

Meriden, 

New Haven, 

Stamford, 

Bridgeport, 

Litchfield, 

Middletown, 



Hawley 

Jewell 

Piatt 

Harrison 

Bamum 

Minor 

Hawley 

Jewell 

Piatt 

Harrison 

Hawley 

Jewell 

Piatt 

Harrison 

Chas. B. Andrews 
S. W. Kellogg . . . 

Bamum 

Minor 



FORMAL BALLOTS 



49 
35 

24 

14 
14 

lO 

I 



148 



ist 


2d 


3d 


4th 


5th 


55 


59 


62 


63 


61 


39 


43 


43 


46 


49 


25 


20 


19 


22 


15 


13 


14 


18 


17 


25 


9 


7 


4 


I 




7 


5 


4 







7 th 


8th 


9 th 


loth 


nth 


65 


67 


71 


71 


64 


50 


50 


46 


51 


53 


9 


5 


5 


5 


10 


24 


28 


28 


23 


21 



13th 


14th 


15th 


1 6th 


17th 


61 


64 


59 


59 


59 


48 


46 


41 


39 


36 


23 


26 


29 


25 


28 


18 


14 


20 


18 


18 






I 


5 
2 

I 


3 
4 

I 



6th 

67 

47 

13 
21 



12th 

65 
52 
16 
16 



1 8th 

58 
33 
29 
16 

I 

4 
6 



The Midnight Caucus 



45 



to Mr. Piatt, never left him until he was elected." Mr. 
Baldwin had been a Harrison man from the beginning, 
although he was an intimate associate of many of Mr. 
Piatt's friends. The representatives from New Haven 
County were in the habit of running up to Hartford 
every day on the same train, and there was much 
good-natured chaffing back and forth. Baldwin was 
especially vehement in support of Harrison, declaring 
that he should vote for Harrison " first, last, and all the 

FORMAL BALLOTS 



Hawley 

Jewell 

Piatt 

Harrison 

Kellogg 

Bamum 

Lyman D. 

Brewster. 
W. T. Minor.. 



1 9 til 


20th 


2 1 St 


22d 


23d 


60 


60 


58 


61 


60 


42 


45 


47 


47 


46 


25 


26 


28 


28 


24 


16 


14 


17 


14 


12 


5 


4 


I 






2 


2 

I 


I 







(11.45 P.M.) 



Hawley . . 
Jewell. . . 
Piatt .... 
Harrison . 



24th 


25th 


26 th 


27th 


28th 


67 


65 


62 


62 


57 


47 


43 


41 


41 


40 


25 


29 


31 


31 


33 


II 


12 


17 


16 


12 



Hawley . . 
Jewell. . . 
Piatt .... 
Harrison , 



29th 


30th 


31st 


32d 


33d 


63 


63 


64 


64 


66 


40 


37 


34 


26 


18 


36 


39 


43 


51 


61 


12 


9 


8 


9 


7 



Hawley . . 
Jewell. . . 

Piatt 

Harrison , 



34th 


35th 


36th 






72 


71 


72 






3 


3 


I 






74 


75 


76 






2 


2 









Two ballots were declared void, as more votes were cast than 
there were present in the caucus. 



46 Orville H. Piatt 

time." Finally James P. Piatt said to him: "I 'm a 
pretty good Piatt man, but I '11 tell you what I '11 do. 
If the time ever comes when my vote will nominate 
Harrison, you can have it. But you must agree that if 
the time ever comes when your vote will nominate Piatt, 
you will give it." " Agreed," said Baldwin, and neither 
thought of the incident again till just before the deci- 
sive ballot. James Piatt had noticed the two persistent 
votes for Harrison, and it flashed across his mind where 
one of them came from; he went over to Baldwin, and 
asked him if he remembered the conversation on the 
train going up from Meriden. " I do," replied Baldwin. 
"Well," said young Piatt, "this is the time and this 
is the place." Baldwin cast his vote for Piatt. At 
2.30 A.M., the result of the thirty-sixth formal ballot 
was announced: Piatt 76; Hawley 72; Jewell i, and 
Piatt was nominated. On January 21st, the election 
took place in joint assembly of the Legislature. It 
resulted: Piatt 139; Barnum 94; scattering i; not 
voting 10. 

The nomination when it came was a surprise to the 
successful candidate. He spent the eventful night 
in Meriden, remaining in the telegraph office until 
midnight, and during the early evening he received fre- 
quent despatches from Hartford. When his vote fell 
off to five, he gave it up and went to bed and to sleep. 
After the caucus adjourned, the Meriden campaigners 
caught the first train for home and drove up from the 
station to the house in the early morning. They all 
ran upstairs, where they found Piatt asleep. They 
woke him up, John Coe shouting, ''Get up there, you 
old United States Senator!" but they could not get 
Piatt to believe it until he had heard the whole story 
of the caucus to the end. 

It would be agreeable to set down here that the action 



The Midnight Caucus 47 

of the midnight caucus was received with approbation 
everywhere. The truth is, however, that for a time 
there was a feehng of disappointment, which found 
expression, thinly veiled, in many of the newspapers 
within the State and openly in most of those without. 
Popular fancy seems to have fixed itself upon General 
Hawley, which was not at all to be wondered at, and 
failing him, there were several names which would have 
appealed to it before the one which for the first time 
now challenged its attention. General Hawley came 
forward handsomely in the shadow of personal dis- 
appointment, in a short editorial paragraph which 
appeared in the Hartford Courant of the following morn- 
ing, and which must have been written within the hour 
of the announcement of his defeat. It is possible that 
what he wrote served as an introduction of Mr. Piatt 
to many of the people of Connecticut, as it did to all 
beyond the borders of the State. General Hawley 
could not refrain from alluding gently to "the influences 
that caused the various changes in the balloting," but 
he added: 

Mr. Piatt is fifty-one years old, a native of Washington, 
Litchfield County, an able lawyer, at present Attorney for 
the State in New Haven County. His first prominent 
appearance in pubhc life was as Secretary of State in 1857-8, 
during Governor Holley's administration. In 186 1-2 he 
was a Senator from the sixth district; in 1864 and 1869 he 
was in the House, the latter year being elected Speaker. 

He is a gentleman of most honorable character, sound 
judgment, well-balanced mind, familiarity with political 
affairs, and much sagacity in conducting them. He is 
sound in principle, an Anti-Slavery man and Republican 
from his boyhood, a good hard-money man and sure to have 
convictions and follow them. This much his chief competi- 



48 Orville H. Piatt 

tor takes pleasure in writing hastily at the late hour which 
announces his nomination. 

Other newspapers printed slighting comments which 
their authors lived to regret, and there were fugitive 
suggestions in Democratic journals that the Democrats 
in the Legislature should combine with a minority of 
Republicans to elect Hawley, who of course would not 
have tolerated such a thing. Two years later, in 1881, 
he was unanimously nominated by the Republican 
caucus, was elected Senator, and served by Piatt's side 
for nearly twenty-five years. 

Among Mr. Piatt's neighbors, and among those who 
knew him, the feeling toward him was cordial and 
appreciative. The New Haven Union said: 

O. H. Piatt holds high rank in the estimation of the 
people of Meriden, among whom he has lived and worked 
these twenty-seven years, and bears a public and private 
character beyond reproach. He is a deacon in the First 
Congregational Church with which he has been connected 
since the Reverend W. H. H. Murray^ preached there, and 
he is forward in all Christian work in his adopted town. A 
man of few words, of fewer promises, and stern unyielding 
will, he rarely fails a friend in need or turns back from the 
path he has marked out for himself. He is pre-eminently 
noted for two things: unselfishness, in political as well as 
social life, and true earnestness. As a friend remarked: 
"He has not a selfish bone in his body. The best years of 
his life he has devoted to others, and that is one reason he 
is to-day a poor man. " 

The friends and neighbors in Meriden deferred their 
greeting until after the formal action of the Legis- 

• Mr. Murray did not preach in Meriden until 1864, some years 
after Mr. Piatt became a member of the Church. He had earlier 
preached in the Church at Judea for a little while. 



The Midnight Caucus 49 

lature had set the seal of certainty upon the choice 
of the caucus. On the night foUovving the election, 
there was a reception at the Meriden house, with illumi- 
nations and a midnight supper. There had been no 
formal preparations, but the crowds were dense, and 
for two hours men of every calling assured the newly 
elected Senator of their good- will. In the midst of the 
reception "Neighbor Piatt" was led to the platform 
where he spoke a few characteristically simple words: 

I thank you, my friends, for this kind reception. 
This is neither the time nor the place to make a speech, 
and yet I think I would be lacking in the common feeling 
of humanity if I did not express to you in some way the 
thanks I feel for the respect you have ever shown me. It 
touches me, coming as it does from you men who have 
known me longest and best — the men I have lived with 
these twenty-eight years. I have lived a somewhat trans- 
parent life. You know what I have done and what I have 
failed to do. It is that that makes this demonstration the 
more acceptable and touching to me. I think no man could 
have lived in a place so long and been more sensible of the 
kindly feeling entertained toward him than I. I want to 
thank all my friends, but especially my Meriden friends. 
They were not politicians, but were full of love and devotion, 
and labored for my welfare without hope of reward; and 
such kindly feeling and disposition touches me to the heart. 
Their faith makes me rejoice more at their gratification 
than my success. As I meet you here and have met you 
elsewhere, so shall I be pleased to meet you at all times. I 
shall be glad to meet you at any time or place — glad to meet 
the kind friends whose memory I shall always cherish. 
Just now everything is new and seems unreal. I can 
scarcely appreciate the future. How I shall bear myself, 
how I shall walk in the new path in which I am set, time 
will show. I do know that I shall try to do right as I see 
the right and I have faith to believe that this will bring me 



50 Orville H. Piatt 

through to the end without discredit to you, to myself, or 
to the State. My friends, this is no place for an announce- 
ment of my political views. I have in the course of my 
life dealt and received many hard political blows, but I 
have always tried to act right and shall so continue. I 
thank you again for your kindness, and I trust that all 
your expectations with reference to me will not be dis- 
appointed. Good-night.^ 

1 At the supper which followed the reception, there were many 
complimentary speeches from members of the General Assembly 
and friends. A dispatch was read from Mr. Piatt's old teacher, 
F. W. Gunn, as follows: 

"Washington, Connecticut, 
January 2 2d. 
"To Mayor Lines: 

"Washington, the place of his birth and growth to manhood, 
joins with Meriden, the home of his mature life and active labor, 
in congratulations upon the election of Honorable O. H. Piatt as 
a Senator of the United States — 'An honest man 's the noblest 
work of God.' " 

After this, Mr. Piatt was called to his feet again. The rest of 
the proceedings may be described in the words of the Meriden 
Daily Republican the following day: 

"Mr. Piatt rose and made one of those earnest, thoughtful, 
ringing speeches that took his own townsmen, who heard him, back 
to the grand speeches he made in Town Hall in the presidential 
and other campaigns, when the services of our best and most 
powerful men were required on the political platform. He began 
by referring to the senatorial contest just closed, and how deeply 
he felt the responsibilities of the new duties to which he was called. 
In endeavoring to discharge them, he would be guided solely by 
what he had always considered a safe rule to follow, and had made 
the rule of his life — doing what he believed to be right. To say 
that he was gratified at being surrounded by so many of his imme- 
diate neighbors and good personal friends did not express how he 
felt, and if any one thing more than another gave him special 
gratification, it was to know that his old friends of years ago, in 
the home of his boyhood, Litchfield County, were rejoicing at his 
election. Another source of gratification to him was that his four 
competitors were gentlemen whom he was proud to call his friends, 
and he knew of no four gentlemen whom he would more freely call 
on for a personal favor, than on Joe Hawley, H. B. Harrison, 



The Midnight Caucus 51 

Marshall Jewell, and Governor Minor. And he was glad to observe 
that Connecticut had such noble men to select a Senator from, for 
had either been elected, the State would have been honored, and 
the principles of the Republican party faithfully vindicated. 
Mr. Piatt then went on to say that he rejoiced that no friend of 
his, in the most heated hour of the campaign, had dropped an unkind 
or offensive word toward any of these gentlemen. Had they done 
so, it would have been painful to him. He felt that had either been 
elected instead of himself, they might have brought more ability 
to the discharge of the duties of the position, but none of them 
could exhibit a greater desire to do right. It was the desire to do 
right that signalized the victory and achievements of the Re- 
publican party, and, knowing of that desire, he was proud to have 
been identified with that party of progress since its birth. It was 
the determination to do right that lifted politics from the mire, 
and nerved conscientious men to become politicians. 

"Mr. Piatt then reviewed the Republican party and the previous 
parties of which it is an outgrowth, covering a period of thirty 
years, every year of which was devoted by the Republican party 
and its predecessors with similar principles to contending for the 
rights of man. He liked the Republican party because it made 
these rights of man its cardinal principle, and because it did so, 
he was a Republican, and he could sincerely say that in all his active 
participation in Republican campaigns, he never thought of self, 
never sought nor cared for political place, his ambition being to lift 
the Republican party to a plane where the rights and equality of 
man would be recognized all over the land, and that a free ballot 
would be cast, whether in South Carolina or Connecticut. 'This 
must be and shall be accomplished, ' said Mr. Piatt. ' With that 
principle to contend for, the party contending for it cannot fail. ' 
Mr. Piatt then deprecated in strong words the use of money in 
elections. It provoked him, he said, when he heard it said that 
campaigns could not be carried on without a lavish or corrupt 
expenditure of money. The falsity of the assertion has been 
demonstrated, and he was thankful that it had been demonstrated 
by the Republican party. Mr. Piatt, after dwelling on this point 
at some length, referred to the currency question, remarking that 
like all other issues of the day it had only two sides, right and wrong, 
and he firmly believed that the man who was right was he who 
advocated a currency that would have a standard value all over 
the world, without being subjected to daily fluctuations. He stood 
there, and he believed the great mass of the Republican party 
stood there. Mr. Piatt closed by recognizing the distinguished 
honor and privilege of representing Connecticut in the councils 



52 Orville H. Piatt 

of the nation. He loved Connecticut because it was his native 
State and he had grown with its growth. He had proudly watched 
its progress, not only in the pursuits of the sturdy farmer, but in 
its manufacturing interests, which had increased little by little, un- 
til every railroad and stream was dotted with a manufactory, a trib- 
ute to the thrift of the commonwealth — a commonwealth that had in 
it many of the sons and daughters of the passengers of the Mayflower, 
whose puritanical blood was a certain protection against all vague 
'isms' and socialistic and communistic ideas and heresies that were 
seeking a place in New England. In Connecticut they would make 
no headway. Mr. Piatt resumed his seat amid a storm of applause. 
"At the close of Mr. Piatt's remarks, Mr. Worthington took the 
floor voluntarily and said the election of Mr. Piatt was a cause for 
more than usual gratification, because it was accomplished without 
expenditure of a cent for liquor of any kind, or for any other corrupt 
purpose. It proved that Mr. Piatt was true to the principle of 
total abstinence, and he would therefore propose, in cold water, 
the health of Honorable Orville H. Piatt. The whole company 
rose, and with glasses raised, duly responded, after which the com- 
pany separated." 

The following day the new Senator went to Hartford to meet the 
members of the Legislature. The Meriden Republican gave a 
naively interesting picture of the event: 

"For the first time since its completion, Senator Piatt was in 
the State Capitol to-day. He went up from here on the nine o'clock 
train and took his accustomed seat in the smoking-car. It soon 
became generally known on the train that the new Senator was on 
board. Many came from other cars and carelessly passed by to 
get a good, square look at the man of whom they had heard so 
much the past few days. 

"Arriving at Hartford, Senator Piatt strolled leisurely over the 
Capitol, accompanied by Senator Lines and Representative Piatt, 
son of the Senator. At the Capitol the Senator was conducted to 
the governor's room, where Governor Andrews gave him a cordial 
greeting. The new Capitol was then looked over, and Senator 
Piatt commented on the beauty of the work and paid many compli- 
ments to the fidelity of the Capitol Commissioners. Soon after the 
House convened, the news was circulated that Senator Piatt was 
in the building and a general desire to see him was expressed. 
Speaker Wright sent a friend of Senator Piatt to him to know if he 
would not present himself in the House, if sent for, after official 
recognition of his presence in the Capitol was announced. Senator 
Piatt sent back word that he preferred to have no formality, but 
that he would drop into the House just before adjournment and 



The Midnight Caucus 53 



see how many faces he knew there and how many knew him. On 
Speaker Wright being informed of Mr. Piatt's wishes, Mr. P. T. 
Bamum, who was conversing with the Speaker at the time, said 
that would never do. 

" 'The new Senator must show himself and give us all a good 
look at the man we voted for. ' A few minutes later, as the House 
was about to adjourn, Senator Piatt entered, accompanied by his 
son, and both sat at the latter's desk,tind Speaker Wright at once 
went to Mr. Piatt. Then P. T. Bamum arose from his desk and 
said: 'Mr. Speaker: This House has always been running me and 
remarking upon their desire to see my show. But I think we have 
with us what will please them more than anything I could present. 
I understand our distinguished Senator-elect, Orville H. Piatt, is 
in this House, and I move you, sir,'that he be invited to the Speaker's 
desk, that we all have the pleasure of looking on his genial face. ' 
Speaker Wright conducted Senator Piatt to the desk and declared 
a recess of five minutes. Senator Piatt, on rising, was received with 
deafening applause, again and again repeated. He said: 

" 'You can scarcely expect me to say hardly more than to tender 
to you my acknowledgment for what you have done in selecting 
me to represent the State of Connecticut, in the Senate of the United 
States. Others might have been chosen who would represent you 
more ably, but no man, I am sure, can bring to the service a more 
ardent love for the State than I. I think I know something of the 
people of this State, of its industries and wants, and certainly I 
shall try to faithfully represent its people, its industries, and its 
wants. I have seen its manufacturing interests grow from the small- 
est beginnings, until now manufacturing interests dot every railroad 
and stream in the State. I have seen its wealth trebled, and its 
population vastly increase. I think I know something of its 
people, and as much as I admire the people of other States I do 
think that there is more of the loyal spirit and character which 
distinguished those who came over on the Mayflower than can be 
found in any other State, in its institutions and its people ; and 
God helping me, I never shall be recreant to the trust you have 
committed to me.' 

"Senator Piatt was loudly applauded at the close and soon left 
the House. He visited the Senate Chamber and engaged in social 
conversation with the Senators who invited him to their private 
room off the Senate, where a pleasant hour was spent. The Senator 
during the afternoon called on several personal friends in Hartford, 
each of whom most cordially congratulated him and declared 
themselves not only satisfied, but well pleased with his election. 
The visit was a very pleasant one to the Senator-elect. " 



CHAPTER V 

A LOOKER-ON IN THE SENATE 

First Experiences at Washington — The Forty-Sixth Congress — 

Eulogy of Rush Clark. 

THE newly created Senator was given little time to 
prepare himself for the opportunity thrust into 
his hand. His election had taken place in the closing 
days of the last session of the Forty- fifth Congress, when 
the situation growing out of differences between Presi- 
dent Hayes and the Democratic leaders at the capital 
resulted in a filibuster which prevented the passage of 
two great supply bills, the Army Appropriation bill and 
the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. President 
Hayes, accordingly, was compelled on the 4th of 
March to issue a call for a special session of the Forty- 
sixth Congress, to meet on March 18, 1879. Mr. 
Piatt was hurried into his new duties at Washington. 
He bade good-bye to the old scenes at Meriden with a 
feeling of regret, looking toward the future without 
elation, yet without self-distrust. His old friend John 
Coe drove him to the station the day he left Meriden to 
go to Washington. Little was said by either until 
just as they were about to part, when Mr. Piatt 
remarked slowly: 

"John, I 'm going to the United States Senate; 
you won't hear much of a fellow named Piatt for some 

54 



A Looker-on in the Senate 55 

years. I 'm going to listen and learn, and I won't 
begin to talk until I stand for something." 

Mr. Piatt took his seat on the first day of the session. 
Among those who appeared at the presiding officer's 
desk with him to take the oath of office were William 
B. Allison of Iowa, Matt. H. Carpenter of Wisconsin, 
Roscoe Conkling of New York, John J. Ingalls of 
Kansas, John A. Logan of Illinois, Justin S. Morrill of 
Vermont, George H. Pendleton of Ohio, Daniel W. 
Voorhees of Indiana, John P. Jones of Nevada, Wade 
Hampton of South Carolina, Zebulon B. Vance of North 
Carolina, and George G. Vest of Missouri. Of these, 
all except Vance, Pendleton, Hampton, and Vest had 
seen previous service. Other members of the Senate 
with w^hom Mr. Piatt found himself associated were 
John T. Morgan of Alabama, A. H. Garland of Arkansas, 
Newton Booth of California, Henry M. Teller of Colo- 
rado, Thomas F. Bayard and Eli Saulsbury of Dela- 
ware, Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, David Davis of 
Illinois, Joseph E. McDonald of Indiana, Samuel J. 
Kirkwood of Iowa, Preston B. Plumb of Kansas, 
James B. Beck of Kentucky, William Pitt Kellogg of 
Louisiana, James G. Blaine and Hannibal Hamlin 
of Maine, Henry L. Dawes and George F. Hoar of 
Massachusetts, Zachariah Chandler and Thomas W. 
Ferry of Michigan, William Windom of Minnesota, 
Blanche K. Bruce and L. Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi, 
Francis M. Cockrell of Missouri, Allen G. Thurman of 
Ohio, Henry B. Anthony and Ambrose E. Burnside of 
Rhode Island. With some of these men, Allison, 
Morrill, Vest, Teller, Hoar, and Cockrell, he had 
associations almost throughout his political career, 

^With the scrupulous regard for seniority and prece- 
dent which characterizes the procedure of the Senate, he 



56 Orville H. Piatt 

was placed at the tail-end of three committees — none 
of the first importance — Pensions, Patents, and the 
Select Committee to investigate and report the best 
means of preventing the introduction and spread of 
epidemic diseases. All committees were in control 
of the Democratic majority, so that there was little 
which the least important member of the minority 
could be expected to accomplish.^ 

It is not to be wondered at that little was heard from 
the country lawyer, unexpectedly elevated to the United 
States Senate, taking his seat within two months of his 
election. In this first session, lasting from March i8th, 
to July ist, and monopolized by a bitter partisan dis- 
cussion of the use of Federal troops at the polls, it is 
recorded that he introduced two bills for the relief of 
constituents and that he spoke six times. His entire 
activities during the session are covered in thirty-four 
lines of the Congressional Record. His first forensic 
appearance in the Senate occurred in the course of a 

1 The composition of these committees was as follows: 

Pensions: Withers (chairman), McPherson, Groome, Call, 
Farley, Ingalls, Bruce, Kellogg, Piatt. 

Patents: Keman (chairman), Coke, Slater, Call, Booth, Hoar, 
Piatt. 

Epidemic Diseases: Harris (chairman), Lamar, Garland, Jonas, 
Paddock, Sharon, Piatt. 

Late in the session Mr. Hoar withdrew from the Select Committee 
to inquire into alleged frauds in the late elections, of which he 
was the last member, and Mr. Piatt took his place. His seniors 
on this committee were Wallace (chairman), Bailey, Garland, 
McDonald, Keman, Teller, Cameron of Wisconsin, and Kirkwood. 

At a late stage of the session a committee was appointed to con- 
sider a bill introduced by Senator Pendleton to provide that the 
principal officers of each of the executive departments might 
occupy seats on the floor of the Senate and House of Represen- 
tatives, and Mr. Piatt was placed at the end of this committee, 
which had the following membership : Pendleton, Voorhees, Bayard, 
Butler, Farley, Conkling, Allison, Blaine, Ingalls, Piatt. 



A Looker-on in the Senate 57 

speech by his colleague, Mr. Eaton, on the Legislative, 
Executive, and Judicial Appropriation bill. It is given 
as a matter of history : 

Mr. Eaton: I want to say here, and my colleague will 
agree with me, that in nearly every town in Connecticut 
no matter which party is in power, not in all towns, but 
in most, a fair share of the jurors is given to the weaker 
party. It is so in my own town always. So it is with 
justices of the peace. 

Mr. Platt: Will my colleague permit me to interrupt 
him? 

Mr. Eaton: Certainly. 

Mr. Platt: That ought to be the case, but there are far 
too many towns in the State where it is not the case. 

Mr. Eaton : I know it is the case to a certain extent. 

Not a sensational or dramatic entrance upon a public 
career! The assurance given John Coe on the drive to 
the station at Meriden was in a fair way to verification. 

During his second session he was not much more 
active. He is credited with making "remarks" on 
thirty different occasions. Most of them were casual 
and related either to the business of the Committees 
on Pensions and Patents of which he was a member, or 
the needs of some constituent. Whenever he inter- 
jected an inquiry or a comment it was in the direction 
of economy and regular procedure. But he took 
advantage of an opportunity to declare himself briefly 
on at least one important question of public poHcy. 
Shortly after the Christmas recess he introduced the 
following joint resolution, which was ordered to he on 
the table : 

" Whereas, An improved and cheaper maritime communi- 
cation between the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards of the 
United States by means of a ship-canal through some 



58 Orville H. Piatt 

portion of the Central American isthmus has become im- 
portant to the commercial interests of this country ; and 

Whereas, Congress deems it to be necessary and ex- 
pedient that the national and public interests in such a 
communication should be secured, rather than merely 
private and speculative ends: Therefore, 

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives, etc., 
That the President be requested, if he shall deem it expe- 
dient, to communicate to the governments of the principal 
maritime nations of Europe the desire of this Government 
to secure such public interests, and to invite the co-operation 
of such governments in the selection of a route of isthmus 
ship-transit, which shall be found to subserve most largely 
the general interests of all the maritime nations, and also to 
communicate to such governments the desire of the Govern- 
ment to come to a mutual understanding with reference 
to the neutrality of such an interoceanic transit when it 
shall have been opened by the enterprise and capital of 
their respective citizens. 

This resolution he succeeded in getting referred to 
the Committee on Foreign Relations two months later, 
but that was as far as it went. He lived to take part 
in all the legislation which resulted ultimately in the 
digging of the Isthmian Canal. 

During this session also, Mr. Piatt performed for the 
first time a duty which he was called upon many times 
to repeat during his twenty-six years of service — a deli- 
cate and difficult duty in which he always showed 
rare taste and feeling. On the death of Rush Clark, a 
Representative from Iowa, in the preceding spring, he 
had been appointed a member of the committee to 
accompany the body to the grave, and he was asked 
to take part in the memorial exercises in the Senate 
early in February. What he said should be recorded 
here, not only for its excellence, but because it afforded 



A Looker-on in the Senate 59 

Mr. Piatt his first opportunity to address the Senate 
in any but the briefest possible way : 

The grave has at least one feature which somewhat 
modifies its gloom. There a man is truly judged by his 
fellows. The sharp antagonisms, the unjust judgments of 
life are buried there, before the cofhn is lowered, and the 
abilities, the impress, and the true character of the one who 
is to be its occupant are there justly acknowledged. 

The courtesies of the grave are accorded to all, but men 
do not there deceive themselves or others in the estimate 
which they place upon the life of a fallen comrade. There 
you may learn his true history, his innermost life, his true 
character. At the home of Rush Clark, from the moment 
we reached the station till the last sad rites had been 
tenderly and lovingly performed, the evidences of a great 
sorrow pervading the entire community were unmistak- 
able. At the very borders of the State which he had 
adopted as his own, we were made to feel that his influence 
had extended beyond the limits of the district which he 
more immediately represented, and that the whole State 
mourned for one of its truest and noblest men. All along 
the route to the beautiful city which had been the scene 
of his more active labors, we were met by strong, true men, 
who grieved as if the deceased had been a brother. I shall 
never forget the hour of our arrival at Iowa City. It was 
night, but the whole population had gathered to pay its 
tribute of respect to the dead, to testify its sympathy for 
the bereaved. The saddened faces of the people, seen in 
the light of the torches which were to guide us; the whis- 
pered orders for the disposition of his remains; the tears 
which fell from the eyes of sturdy men, all spoke most 
emphatically of the character of the man and of the place 
he had won for himself in the hearts of all. If deep sorrow 
could have restored him to life he would have lived again. 
It was an hour to be remembered always, and its impressions 
were intensified by the obsequies of the next day, when a 



6o Orville H. Piatt 

vast concourse gathered to attend with uncovered heads 
the impressive funeral ceremonies, and to follow in long 
procession to the tomb all that was left of him who had 
been their reliance and pride. Neither the falling rain 
nor the sharp thunder could deter those who honored him 
from the performance in minutest detail of the last solemn 
rites. So he was laid away to rest in the beautiful cemetery 
just outside of and overlooking the city he had chosen for 
his home. How appropriately such a resting place is called 
"God's acre." There we buried him, in the early spring- 
time, when the opening bud, the sprouting grain, and the 
springing grass were nature's assurances of the life to 
come. 



CHAPTER VI 

DEVELOPMENT OF A LAWMAKER 
Growth in the Senate — Personal Characteristics 

TO those who look back now upon his service in the 
Senate it is plain that the traits which later gave 
him his peculiar hold were his in the beginning. / From 
first to last there was a steady, even growth in qualities 
which make a well-poised legislator, and the germs 
were there at the outset in his patient industry, sound 
judgment, and rectitude. He liked to go slow and 
be sure ; he was honest in his speech and in his mental 
processes; it has been said of him that he thought on 
oath. His early years in the Senate were marked by 
faithful attention to the duties of his place, by quiet 
observation of what was going on, by contented accept- 
ance of responsibilities which gradually lengthening 
service brought upon him. Little known at the time 
of his election, he felt bound to justify it by being as 
good a Senator as he could. So he worked ploddingly 
on the committees of which he was a member until 
he mastered the business of each and investigated with 
scrupulous minuteness every question that came up to 
him. He could not rest contented with a thing half 
done, and his satisfaction came in the performance 
rather than in the resulting praise. " I have no am- 
bitions," he wrote once; " what I do, I do because it is 
set me to do, and I have a feeling that I ought to do 

6i 



62 Orville H. Piatt 

it as thoroughly and as well as I can. That is about 
all of it "; and again: " There is a scriptural text some- 
where in which Christ says of a woman, 'She hath done 
what she could.' I have never had any other motive." 
In pronouncing a eulogy on Senator Gear of Iowa, he 
unconsciously came very near describing himself: 

All types of our people find their representatives here, 
and it is well that it is sd. Men of commanding intellect, 
genius, eloquence, and brilliancy are both needed and 
found in these senatorial seats, but other men equally 
representing the people and equally useful, who do not 
attract popular enthusiasm by reason of any unusual or 
striking gifts, are quite as much needed here — men of 
strong good sense, men of affairs, of great industry, and 
unswerving devotion to the principles and the interests of 
the Republic ; men whose general characteristics can best 
be described by three grand words — sturdy, faithful, and 
true. Senator Gear was such a man. ' Sometimes I think 
I would rather it should be written on my tombstone, 
"He was sturdy, faithful, and true," than to have it 
written, "he was eloquent, learned, and great." 

Thus he went from session to session and term to 
term, a little broader and stronger each year, a little 
more confident in himself, a little better understood. 
Gradually he became known among his brother Senators 
as one who could always be relied upon, who had no 
axes of his own to grind, and who thought and acted 
truthfully. It was not long before they found out that 
he was a good lawyer and that his judgment was always 
sure to be nearly right. In the intimate association 
which comes from continued service in a comparatively 
small body they grew to trust him and to like him. He 
made no enemies in the Senate, any more than in 
Meriden ; and he did in the Senate exactly as in Meriden, 



Development of a Lawmaker 63 

except that the things he had to do and the questions 
he had to study carried a wider range. He had no 
fads. . He did not delude himself with the notion that 
he was clothed with a mission. He attended to each 
day's work religiously, and when one task was com- 
pleted he laid it aside to take up another. To every 
question big or little he gave the same painstaking 
conscientious consideration, and tried to get at the 
kernel of truth in it no matter how tough the rind, 
without giving a thought to whether getting at it would 
increase his reputation or not. He used to be in his 
place whenever the Senate was in session, and those 
who had questionable measures in hand learned to 
dread his slowly spoken "Let that go over." Some- 
times he was called a " watch-dog of the Treasury, " but 
he did not like the name and it did not fairly belong to 
him. He was not an indiscriminate objector, but he 
wanted the Senate to know what it was doing before it 
passed a bill. So it came about that Senators got in 
the way of going to him for information and advice, 
and of saying among themselves, " What does Piatt 
think of it?" before making up their minds. Years 
before he gained much reputation outside the Senate 
chamber, he was regarded there as one of the most 
effective men in public life. When he died, Senator 
Cullom, who had served with him more than twenty 
years, expressed of him an opinion to which every other 
Senator would doubtless give assent: 

Senator Piatt was capable in more ways to do what 
the exigencies of the day from time to time put upon him, 
than any other man in the Senate. He was always at 
his post of duty, — always watchful in caring for the in- 
terests of the country, always just and fair to all alike, 
and was always careful and conservative in determining 



64 Orville H. Piatt 

what his duty should be in the disposition of any pubHc 
question; and his judgment was a little more exactly right 
than that of any other Senator. 

It was only natural that he should be entrusted with 
work of steadily increasing importance as time went by. 
When Congress was ready for Federal supervision of 
railroads, he had been eight years a Senator and by 
common consent he was assigned to the special com- 
mittee having that question in hand. When at the 
beginning of the tariff agitation of 1887 the Finance 
Committee were looking for help , they turned intuitively 
to Piatt, because he was painstaking, thorough, and 
dependable, and even before the way was open to make 
him formally a member of the committee he was one 
of the props of the majority in everything relating to 
tariff and finance; when they were looking for some- 
body whom they could trust in the devious windings 
of Indian legislation, their eyes fell easily upon Piatt; 
when the Judiciary Committee wanted a sane, careful, 
and tactful associate, they thought first of Piatt; and 
every added responsibility he assumed without eagerness 
or protest, regardless of whether the new duties were 
likely to be congenial or not. He never pressed his 
claims for assignment to any particular committee, but 
was willing to let the regular processes of the Senate 
work in their own way. He was considerate of the 
feelings of others and never blocked the path of his more 
ambitious associates. So in course of years he gained 
authority among his fellows, begotten of understanding 
and confidence, and when the war with Spain came on 
with its weighty questions to be solved, the Senate 
turned to him with general assent as one well qualified 
to help in their solution. That his name should have 



Development of a Lawmaker 65 

been attached to the Piatt Amendment and so become 
famihar everywhere was merely an incident; for his 
work in relation to the Piatt Amendment was in line 
with what he had been doing right along, service 
which was valued by those who kept track of legislation, 
but which, owing to his own indifference to contempo- 
rary fame, never brought him the popular recognition 
he deserved. Had the Piatt Amendment never been 
framed, he would have had a high place in the records 
of^the Senate just the same. 

^^ He was no orator. He had no faculty for rousing 
enthusiasm, and was quite lacking in the personal 
magnetism which sways men in masses and which his 
colleague Hawley had in such generous measure. Public 
speaking had no glitter or charm for him. It was rarely 
that he experienced the responsive tingle that comes 
from popular applause. He regretted his own short- 
coming as he acknowledged Hawley's gift; but he never 
disclosed a trace of envy because Hawley had what 
he did not possess. He has been described as sitting in 
the Senate, almost lounging in his chair, which for years 
was in the front row directly under the eye of the 
presiding officer, his head often thrown back as if half 
asleep, or bent forward over his desk as though he were 
thinking of other things. But the questions he asked 
or the suggestions he made from time to time showed 
that he was following closely what was going on. When 
he rose to speak, he used slowly to stretch his arms over 
the desk, unbend his legs, and get to his feet by de- 
grees, as if hesitating what to say or whether to speak 
at all. ; Whenever he had anything on his mind he said 
it without waiting to see whether the galleries were full 
or empty. He had a way of talking straight on, 
slowly and deliberately, using homely phrases and few 



66 Orville H. Piatt 

adjectives, with a simplicity and directness that carried 
conviction of his sincerity no matter whether the Hstener 
agreed with him or not. He was never extravagant in 
statement, and after he had made a positive assertion 
there were few who were reckless enough to dispute it. 
Though having little of the art of oratory, yet in the 
scriptural dignity of his diction he sometimes rose to 
heights which could not be surpassed by those more 
skilled in rhetoric. He was not a frequent speaker. 
He never took the floor unless he had something 
pertinent to propose, some argument to elucidate, or 
some misunderstanding to set right. He seldom made 
a set speech. Outside an occasional eulogy, through 
all his service in the Senate, their number could almost 
be counted on one's fingers. Whatever he said was 
prompted by the circumstances of the moment ; because 
he had something in his head which nobody else was 
likely to put exactly as he would like to see it expressed. 
When on the occasion of a public meeting or dinner he 
was obliged to prepare an address, he used to" agonize " 
over it, to borrow one of his own words, and even to the 
last he dreaded setting down in advance of delivery 
what he was expected to say. " Pumping water out 
of a^dry well," he called it. As a lawyer, he would have 
appealed more effectively to a bench of judges than to 
a jury, and that, as it happens, is just the quality which 
gets a man a hearing in the Senate. 

After his death, a writer who knew him well gave 
this truthful picture of his appearance in debate : 

Physically Senator Piatt was no less noteworthy 
than mentally. In his later years he used to be likened 
to a Hebrew prophet. Once suggested, that thought was 
never forgotten as one looked at him. There was a rugged 
strength in the sharp-cut features, strong and individual 



Development of a Lawmaker 67 

as though chiselled in hard gray stone, an austerity in the 
moulding of the mouth, in the outline of the jaw beneath the 
short gray beard, in the whole pose of the man — he must 
have stood six feet four inches tall — that stamped him a 
ruler. He was slender and graceful, too, in his carriage 
despite the slight bend that came with the years, and his 
head was ever erect. His attitude as he addressed the 
Senate was always the same. With one foot slightly 
advanced, and with one hand pressed on the desk beside 
him so that he leaned slightly from the shoulders, he 
would stand with his head thrown back and speak slowly 
and briefly without gesture, speaking distinctly but in a 
quiet tone, looking upward rather than at his listeners, and 
weighing each word as he uttered it, as if he had fused all 
the factors of the problem in the crucible of his mind and 
were but reporting in the minimum of words the conscien- 
tious result. .There was no borrowed effect of impressive- 
ness ; he was naturally impressive or austere in the severe 
simplicity of his manner. He often or commonly qualified 
his statements with a slow "it seems to me" that added 
rather than subtracted weight.^ 

As he continued in service and became one of the 
veterans of the Senate, his unselfish helpfulness was 
more and more in evidence, so that he had the affection 
of his associates as well as their esteem. Sometimes 
he felt that work was being heaped upon him beyond 
his power to endure, but no matter what it was he never 
thought of shirking, " I am nothing but a dray-horse 
anyway," he said, "and I suppose that I must pull the 
load as long as I can stand" ; and another time he wrote : 
" I would rather be an old work-horse drawing my daily 
load than an old race-horse turned out to pasture." 

After he had been in the Senate a good many years, a 
newspaper asked him to answer the question : 

• The Springfield Republican, April 22, 1905. 



68 Orville H. Piatt 

" What must a young man do to become a Senator 
of the United States ? " The reply he made is suggestive 
of the spirit in which he carried on his work : 

In reply to your question I would say: First, that a 
young man had better not have such an ambition, as he 
will only be disappointed if he achieves it; because the 
life of a United States Senator is one of hard work, which 
is never understood and never appreciated. If the young 
man simply desires to obtain the place for any credit or 
honor that may pertain to it, and if that fills his ambition 
without regard to what he may achieve as a Senator, that 
is one thing; but the Senate is much like the old-time school- 
house — divided into classes. If a man is to get into the 
first class and sit on the first bench he has got to do it by 
intense study and work, and whatever class he may be in he. 
only " goes up one " because of some superiority. This is an 
immense country; subjects of legislation embrace the widest 
range, and require the widest information; and to act 
intelHgently a Senator must possess the widest information 
about every subject. The greater his information the more 
useful he becomes. Add to this that he is expected to be 
the agent of every one in his State who has business in 
Washington, legislative, poHtical, or commercial — and you 
obtain a glimpse of what a Senator must do and be to obtain 
a successful reputation. 

Second — If in spite of my advice any young man will 
persist in cherishing the ambition you name, his whole 
Hfe should be a study of poHtical affairs. The Senatorship 
may be thrust on him; it may come as the result of wealth, 
which follows business enterprise ; but the clean and honor- 
able road to it is through a study of public affairs, and the 
capacity to impress the people of his State with the idea 
that he possesses a thorough knowledge of them and will 
be their true representative. 

Third — His idea of politics should be a lofty one. His 
motive for devotion to pubhc life should be that he may 



Development of a Lawmaker 69 

render service to the people rather than to accomplish per- 
sonal success. Few men will ever reach the Senate as a 
result of a talent for political manipulation, and those who 
thus succeed will be senatorial nonentities rather than 
senatorial leaders. 

As he grew older he was spared the common failing 
of the old, a loss of mental elasticity. Instead, his 
faculties seemed constantly to expand so as to embrace 
new themes of national interest, and at his death, in 
all that goes to constitute a public servant he was 
intellectually younger than most of his associates who 
could not count so many years. He seemed to have 
learned the secret of perpetual youth, so that when the 
end came at the age of nearly fourscore the blow was 
as unexpected as though he had been a young man of 
promise just entering upon a new career. 

When the venerable Henry Clay Trumbull congratu- 
lated him on his last election to the Senate, he replied: 

You speak of growing old. Of course, the days are 
told off, one by one, and they go pretty rapidly some- 
times, especially down here during a session of Congress, 
but so far as a man's actual age by years is concerned, 
that does not amount to much. I count no man old, 
who lives in the present, and thinks in the future. 



CHAPTER VII 

SAVIOUR OF THE PATENT SYSTEM 

Chairman of the Patents Committee — Preserving the Patent System 
— Speech of March 24, 1884 — Friend of the American Inventor. 

ILLUSTRATIVE of the spirit which guided the Sena- 
1 tor through years of unselfish service was his work 
for the inventors of the United States. From the begin- 
ning almost to the very end of his career, he gladly gave 
himself without reserve to what to others might have 
seemed a thankless task, the shaping of patent legis- 
lation and the prevention of vicious patent laws. On 
all questions relating to these subjects, he spoke with 
unchallenged authority. It did not bring him general 
reputation ; for newspapers do not advertise such quiet 
success. They save their headlines for spectacular 
effects, the melodrama and extravaganza of the legis- 
lative stage. But what he accomplished brought him 
the satisfaction of work far-reaching and well done, and 
that was all he cared for. If he lost the passing noto- 
riety of the day, he wrote his name in shining letters in 
the history of American Invention where it will be read 
in years to come. 

Beyond most men, he realized the poetry of patents, 
— invention's most effective stimulant and lure. The 
time in which we live he liked to call the age of machin- 
ery, and through it he believed the world was about to 

enter, if it had not already entered, a spiritual age 

70 



Saviour of the Patent System 71 

when mind should triumph over matter, brain over 
muscle, when man should conquer nature's forces and 
make them all his slaves. For him the wonderful 
advancement in the realm of science and in the develop- 
ment of the mechanic arts was not the mark of a 
materialistic time ; it was the evidence of higher things. 
For him, an engine had the beauty of a sculptor's 
masterpiece ; its rhythm was the music of the progress of 
mankind. Books without number had been written 
to tell us of the noble influence upon the character of 
man exerted by the scenes in which he dwells — " by 
mountain and forest, by brook and river and ocean, by 
clear sky and fleecy clouds, by the rare tints of sunset 
and dawn, by breaking billow and roaring blasts," but 
who should write, he asked, of that greater and subtler 
moulding influence exerted upon the character of man 
by his subjection of the forces of the earth and air to be 
his ministering spirits : 

Compare the man who muses on nature, who drinks 
in the influence of the mountain from afar, with the man 
who pierces that mountain to make a highway for the dis- 
tribution of the world's products, or digs out from their 
dungeon the imprisoned metals, to be wrought into imple- 
ments for his own use, and tell me which man grows most 
and best. Which is the most of a man, he who gazes with 
awe on the dark storm-cloud and sees in the lightning only 
the manifestation of the wrath of an angry God, or he 
who subdues the lightning and makes it his servant and 
sends it to and fro on missions of mercy and sympathy 
to his fellow-man? ^ 

Having this vision it is not strange that he discovered 

> Address before the Congress in celebration of the beginning 
of the Second Century of the American Patent System, April 9 
1891. 



72 Orville H. Piatt 

the most significant event between the founding of the 
government and the Civil War, not in the crowded 
pages of pohtical history, but in the little-known Act 
of 1836, which under the express authority of the 
Constitution created the Patent Office, and gave Ameri- 
can inventors their first substantial recognition; nor 
was it to be wondered that he found congenial occupa- 
tion in the task set for him of preserving the integrity 
of that act and blocking the schemes of those who would 
have done it to its death. He logically became a 
member of the Patents Committee at the beginning of 
his first Congress. There was a vacancy caused by 
the retirement of his predecessor, Bamum, and Piatt 
was thought to be a good man for the place because' his 
practice at home had much to do with patent law. It 
was natural, too, that Connecticut should be repre- 
sented on the Committee, because in proportion to her 
population she stands at the head of all the States in the 
number of patents issued to her citizens. When the 
Republicans secured control in 1 881, he became Chair- 
man of the Committee and served as chairman ten years 
in all, one period of six years ending in 1887, when he 
went to the head of the Committee on Territories, the 
other period of four years terminating in 1899, when he 
was entrusted with the great responsibility of the 
newly created Committee on Relations with Cuba. He 
was a member of the Committee until 1903, and to the 
end of his service in the Senate he was looked upon as 
the highest authority in Congress on patent law. To 
reproduce his record would be to recite the catalogue 
of legislation during all that time, and he had to handle 
some of the most important measures affecting patents 
and copyrights enacted during the last three quarters 
of a century. 



Saviour of the Patent System 73 

About the time he became Chairman of the Com- 
mittee, the farmers of the West were up in arms on 
account of what they regarded as the extortions of 
those who held the patents on barbed wire and driven 
wells. The question was rapidly getting into politics, 
and there was danger that Congress would try to ap- 
pease them by passing general legislation which would 
work hardship to innocent inventors not involved in 
the dispute. Mr. Piatt was disturbed by the prospect, 
and tried to appease the discontent by moderate legisla- 
tion. One of the first bills he introduced and reported 
as Chairman of the Committee iji 1882 was to regulate 
practice in patent suits. It provided that where a 
defendant innocently bought a patented article or 
device for his own personal use and the plaintiff did not 
recover more than twenty dollars, no costs should be 
recovered of the plaintiff. He tried to get a vote on 
the bill in the Senate, but amendments were moved 
and objections interposed. " There are two sides to be 
considered here," he pleaded: 

There are those who suffer from the acts of unprincipled 
men, and there are honest patentees throughout the coun- 
try. The rights of both parties are to be considered, and 
I do not think that the people, particularly at the West, 
who have been imposed upon and made to pay money 
unreasonably and improperly, want to insist upon any bill 
or any amendment to this bill which will work a hardship 
to the honest patentee. 

The bill went over; the pressure on Congress con- 
tinued; but it was two years before anything else was 
done. 

The first session of the Forty-eighth Congress in 1884 
is memorable in the history of American invention. 
Mr. Piatt was serving a second term as Chairman of 



74 ^ Orville H. Piatt 

the Patents Committee and it fell to him to save the 
patent system from serious injury. The House of 
Representatives early in the session passed a bill to 
regulate procedure in patent suits in cases of infringe- 
ment by innocent users and purchasers of patented 
devices. It was intended to remedy the evils com- 
plained of by the farmers but its provisions were drastic. 
The true nature and effect of the measure do not seem 
to have been clearly understood. It passed the House 
without debate under suspension of the rules, and when 
it came to the Senate, the Patents Committee in- 
structed the Chairman to report it favorably. No 
sooner did the inventors of the United States begin to 
realize what was going on than a storm of protest arose 
which soon reached the halls of Congress. It was 
contended that the suggested change would destroy 
the usefulness of the Patent Office and bring American 
inventive genius to a pause. 

Mr. Piatt, against the judgment of the majority of 
his committee, set to work to prevent the injury which 
was threatened. On March 24, 1884, hardly a month 
from the time the bill had been reported, he introduced 
a bill of his own which was intended to fix the attention 
of the Senate upon the patent system in a way which 
would react against unfriendly legislation. The bill 
proposed to make an independent department of the 
Patent Office, divorcing it from the Interior Depart- 
ment under which it was placed, and giving it a status 
like that of the Department of Agriculture, which at 
that time was presided over by a commissioner, and not 
by a cabinet officer. The bill also gave to the Patent 
Office exclusive control of the building now known as 
the Interior Department, and of the fund pertaining 
to the office. A few days after introducing this bill, 



Saviour of the Patent System 75 

Mr. Piatt delivered a speech in support of it which was 
regarded at the time as the best defence ever made of 
the American patent system, and which, betraying 
extraordinary thoroughness of research, remains to- 
day the most comprehensive and authoritative public 
utterance concerning its development. He said: 

The growth of our patent system, its vast importance, 
its intimate connection with and direct influence upon 
the property of the country demand that it shall receive a 
degree of attention which it can not and will not receive 
while it remains a merely subordinate bureau of the 
Interior Department. 

After tracing the history of the patent system to its 
origin in the grant of enumerated powers in the Con- 
stitution, he declared that to his mind the passage of 
the Act of 1836, creating the Patent Office, was the 
most important event in the history of the Government, 
prior to the War of the Rebellion. He presented pages 
of statistics to show that the unexampled progress of 
the United States had been dependent upon and co- 
incident with the growth and development of the patent 
system : 

All history confirms us in the conclusion that it is the 
development, by the mechanic arts, of the industries of a 
country, which brings to it greatness and power and glory. 
No purely agricultural, pastoral people ever achieved any 
high standing among the nations of the earth. It is only 
when the brain evolves and the cunning hand fashions 
labor-saving machines that a nation begins to throb with 
new energy and life and expands with a new growth. It 
is only when thought wrings from nature her untold secret 
treasures that solid wealth and strength are accumulated 
by a people. Especially is this true in a republic. Under 
arbitrary forms of government kings may oppress the 



76 Orville H. Piatt 

laborer, kings may conquer other nations, may oppress and 
degrade the men who till the soil, and they may thus acquire 
wealth; but in a republic it is only when the citizen con- 
quers nature, appropriates her resources, and extorts her 
riches that you find real wealth and power. 

We witness our development ; we are proud of our success ; 
we congratulate ourselves, we felicitate ourselves on all 
that we enjoy; but we scarcely ever stop to think of the 
cause of all this prosperity and enjoyment. Indeed, this 
prosperity has become so common that we expect it. Many 
men forget to what they owe it ; many men I am sorry to say 
in these recent years deny the cause of it all. The truth 
is, we live in this atmosphere of invention ; it surrounds 
us as does the light and the air; like light and air it is one 
of our greatest blessings ; and yet we pass it by without 
thought. Some say that the cause of all this wealth, of 
all this influence in the world, springs from other sources ; 
some say it is the result of our free institutions, of our 
Christian civilization, of our habits of industry, of our 
respect for the law, of the vastness of our natural resources, 
but I say inventive skill is the primal cause of all this pro- 
gress and growth. I say the policy which found expression 
in the Constitution of the United States when this clause 
was enacted, giving Congress power "to promote the pro- 
gress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times 
to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their 
respective writings and discoveries," has been the policy 
that has built up this fair fabric. 

Concede all you claim: Free institutions, Christian 
civilization, industrious habits, great respect for law; 
acknowledge all our vast natural resources; and then de- 
duct patents and patented inventions from the causes 
which have led to this development, and you have sub- 
tracted from material, yes, from moral, prosperity nearly 
all that is worth enjoying. Subtract invention from the 
causes which have led to our growth and our grandeur and 
you remit us, you remit our people, to the condition of 



Saviour of the Patent System 77 

the people of Italy, of Switzerland, of Russia. If "know- 
ledge is power," invention is prosperity. 

Let us turn a moment from the present and take one 
rapid glance at the past. Consider the country as it 
was fifty years ago. The cotton-gin, the steamboat, the 
railroad, the power-loom, the printing-press, were indeed 
in embryo, but their development was partial and their 
use was extremely limited. It was still the age of home- 
spun; it was still the age of hand labor. Brain had not, 
so far as production was concerned, superseded muscle. 
We had then twenty-six States. When the commencement 
of our present patent system really began, there were 
twenty-six States in the Union. Twelve new ones and 
eight Territories added since are in my judgment a tribute 
to the inventive genius of this country and to the perfection 
of its patent system. 

Three classes of men had made possible the advance- 
ment of the United States in material prosperity: 
First, the inventors; second, the manufacturers; third 
the skilled laborers. The farmer had become a skilled 
laborer. " He purchases a machine. He no longer 
toils with the rude implements of the past." Without 
patents, the agriculture of the day would be impossible, 
and a large proportion of the agricultural lands of the 
country would be inaccessible. Without the use of 
patents, the entire population capable of labor in the 
country could not raise the cereal productions and get 
the surplus to a market. He denied that inventions 
were opposed to the interests of labor. Whenever a 
labor-saving machine is invented, there is no destruc- 
tion of labor, but redistribution. The man relieved 
from a particular kind of labor by the introduction of a 
mechanical device engages in some higher employment. 
New inventions open new fields of labor. Patents are 
educators. The man who lives in the atmosphere of 



78 Orville H. Piatt 

invention produces more than the one who does not. 
The man who learns to operate a compHcated machine 
acquires education of as much real value as the man 
who learns to conjugate Greek verbs. "There is an 
education of the college; there is also an education of 
the factory and the field. We may not despise or neg- 
lect either." He contended that the right of the 
inventor was as much entitled to the protection of the 
Government as any other species of property; that it 
was excelled in point of dignity by no other property 
right whatever, and was equalled in point of dignity 
only by the rights which authors have in their copy- 
righted books. The property in patents was a property 
which contained within itself the principle of the 
reproduction of property, and that was a characteristic 
which attached to no other species of property. Every 
patent had in it the germ of a new patent, which in 
time was property: 

Nature is one vast storehouse of wealth, but it is a 
locked storehouse, and the human brain alone can unlock 
it. Invention is the magic key? Men seek gold in the 
bowels of the earth, but it lies in the air, in light, in the 
gases, in electricity. It needs no enchanter's wand, no 
talismanic words to set it free — only the processes of 
thought. . . . 

We stand but in the very vestibule of the great store- 
houses of nature's secrets. We have but gathered a 
few pebbles along the sliore on which beats a limitless sea. 
. . . We live in a wonderland. The miracle of yesterday 
is the commonplace of to-day. The dream of the present 
is to be the fact of the immediate future. 

He had heard it said that men would have invented 
without regard to the encouragement given to them by 
our patent laws; that, even if their property in patents 



Saviour of the Patent System 79 

were not protected, they would have gone on inventing 
all the same ; that there had been in some way a mar- 
vellous birth in this country of inventive capacity, and 
that it must grow whether protected or not. 

It is not true [he declared]; the inventor is no more 
a philanthropist than is the agriculturist. He works 
for his support. He works to achieve a competency. He 
invents, if you please, to become rich; but he is no moie 
a philanthropist than any other man in any other walk 
or avocation of life, and you have no right to demand of 
him that he shall be a mere philanthropist. He is en- 
titled to his reward. He is a laborer entitled to his hire, 
entitled to it more if possible than any other laborer, as 
his labor is higher in dignity and grandeur than that of 
any other laborer. 

Having thus dwelt upon the marvels of invention, 
he presented practical considerations in support of his 
bill. He said the Patent Office should be made an 
independent department, not only because of the vast 
importance of the interests which it must care for, but 
because of the treatment which it had received and must 
continue to receive so long as it remained a subordinate 
branch of the Interior Department. The Interior 
Department was overburdened. No one man could 
discharge its duties properly: 

If the Secretary of the Interior had as many heads 
as the Hindoo divinity Siva, and as many arms as Briareus, 
he could not personally perform all the duties pertaining 
to his office that would be most acceptably performed if 
he could give them personal attention. 

The duties to be performed by the Secretary in other 
branches of the Department would probably always 
lead in the future, as in the past, to the selection of a 



8o Orville H. Piatt 

man for the place without special adaptation to the 
important work of the Patent Office : 

Public opinion demands that the Secretary of the In- 
terior must have defined ideas relating to the Indian 
policy; that he must have a knowledge of the laws relating 
to the Indian policy; that he must have a knowledge of 
the laws relating to public lands; that he must under- 
stand the operation of the railroads in their relation to the 
Government; that he must have a territorial knowledge 
which will enable him to administer, so far as his duty 
requires, the affairs of the Territories. He must have been 
trained in a different school from the man who should be 
selected for Commissioner of Patents or for the head of .the 
Patent Department. Let me illustrate. 

If the Secretary of the Interior is to be the superior 
officer, he must pass upon questions of administration 
which he cannot so well understand as the commissioner. 
Under the practice of the office he passes on most com- 
plicated questions affecting the right to inventions. There 
has been no Secretary of the Interior within my knowledge 
who has had any special adaptation to that office, who 
has been selected at all with reference to his mechanical 
judgment or mechanical skill, or because of his superior 
understanding of the complicated questions of patent law. 

The head of the Patent Office should combine an 
accurate and almost universal knowledge of mechanical 
principles with a thorough knowledge of patent law and 
with rare executive and administrative ability. His 
position should be one of entire independence, as his 
duties are more judicial than executive. The office 
should be permanent and not subject to political 
changes. 

Practical arguments there were why the entire 
building of the Interior Department should be turned 
over to the Patent Office : 



Saviour of the Patent System 8i 

The space which is allotted to the clerical employees of 
the Patent Office may be large enough for a dungeon, it 
may be large enough for a tomb, and it may be a little too 
large for a grave, but it is not a fit amount of room for a 
human being to live and do the work of this Government 
in. . . . 

I have visited the Patent Office, and I undertake to say 
that, if any Senator will go there and see where the clerks 
are performing their duties, will see where the most skilled 
experts of the country, with the best scientific attainments, 
are performing their duties, down in the rooms which, 
until it became absolutely necessary to have more space, 
were used only for coal cellars, huddled together where the 
sunlight rarely or never shines in the room, where there 
is little or no ventilation, and where the air is so foul that I 
venture to say no Senator can stay an hour without becom- 
ing nauseated and sick, I think he would have little doubt 
that something should be done not only to increase the 
efficiency of the office, but to prevent the almost barbarous 
treatment of its employees. 

And yet this " pauper whom nobody owns" was the 
only self-sustaining branch of the Government, with a 
fund to its credit of $2,727,107, "not including the 
amount that Congress took from its fund to help pay 
for the building, into the basement and coal cellars of 
which it has been largely crowded." 

The bill which Mr. Piatt introduced served only 
as a text for his speech. It never went farther on 
the legislative road, but that it was not framed in 
vain appears from the proceedings of April 21st, 
when Mr. McPherson of New Jersey, presenting a 
formidable array of remonstrances against the House 
and Senate bills to regulate practice in patent 
suits, moved to recommit the bills to the Patents 
Committee : 



82 Orville H. Piatt 

Considering [he said] the vast amount of interests 
involved in this matter, and considering also that all of 
these interests are to a great extent imperilled and held 
subject to the wisdom of Congress touching all matters 
relating to the patent laws, and considering further the 
very able and exhaustive argument made by the honorable 
Chairman of that Committee (Mr. Piatt) upon this subject 
a few days ago, I have felt emboldened to ask the consent 
of this committee to review its work, and if possible present 
to the Senate some more equitable, some better mode of 
remedying the evils complained of than is found in the 
bills now before the Senate. 

The motions were agreed to and the threatened peril 
was averted. 

It was Mr. Piatt's lot, during his long service, to aid 
in framing many acts relating to patents, so that there 
are few existing laws which do not bear his imprint, 
and even in the last days of his life he was in conference 
with the leaders of the American bar, with reference to 
reform in the patent laws still to be secured. But 
though he had done nothing else, the service he ren- 
dered in the Forty-eighth Congress would have been 
enough to earn him the lasting gratitude of American 
inventors. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WORK FOR INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT, 1884-189I 

International Copyright — A Legislative Triumph — Law of 1891 — 

Subsequent Legislation. 

MR. PLATT'S name is justly associated more 
closely than that of any other legislator with the 
work done for bringing the United States into copyright 
relations with Europe. Under his skilful leadership, 
the campaign which for over half a century had been 
carried on without practical results by the publishers 
and authors of the United States, culminated in the 
enactment by the Fifty-first Congress of a law which for 
the first time assured to foreign authors protection in 
the United States for the property rights in their 
productions, and which secured at the same time 
reciprocal protection in Europe for the works of 
American authors. 

The question of international copyright was first 
brought before Congress in 1837, when Henry Clay 
presented an address from certain authors of Great 
Britain representing the injury caused to their literary 
property and to their property interests, through the 
want of a law securing to them within the United 
States the exclusive control of their productions, and 
requesting, in behalf of the authors of Great Britain, a 
remedy through legislation. The address was referred 
to a select committee made up of Henry Clay, William 

83 



84 Orville H. Piatt 

C. Preston, James Buchanan, Daniel Webster, Thomas 
Ewing, and John Ruggles, which committee reported 
a bill for the amendment of the copyright statute by 
the addition of an international provision. The bill 
drafted by Clay on the lines of the report of the com- 
mittee remains one of the classics of legislative litera- 
ture. Memorials urging its passage, signed by the 
leading writers of the United States, among them, 
Washington Irving, Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, 
John Quincy Adams, William Cullen Bryant, and 
Robert C. Winthrop, and further memorials signed by 
a publishers' committee, the representatives of which 
were William H. Appleton and George P. Putnam, 
were laid before Congress. Petitions were also sub- 
mitted in opposition to the proposed legislation. Mr. 
Clay never succeeded in securing action upon his bill, 
the provisions of which were in accord with the statute 
passed in 1891, and with that which went into force in 
1909, in requiring American manufacture for the books 
securing copyright. It was presented in the Senate 
five times, but was voted upon only once, in 1840, 
when it was ordered to lie upon the table. 

Between 1837 and 1842, numerous petitions favor- 
ing international copyright were presented to Congress, 
petitions which included in addition to the signatures 
of nearly all the leading authors of the country, the 
names of the representatives of the Publishers' Copy- 
right League. 

In 1838, after the passing of the first international 
copyright act in Great Britain, Lord Palmerston invited 
the American Government to co-operate in shaping a 
copyright convention between the two countries. 

In 1842, George P. Putnam brought again into 
activity the American Copyright League, and presented 



Work for International Copyright 85 

a memorial drafted by himself, and signed by ninety- 
seven publishers and printers, in which it was stated 
that the absence of an international copyright was 
"alike injurious to the business of publishing and to the 
best interests of the people at large." 

In 1848, a memorial, drafted by George P. Putnam 
and signed by William C. Bryant, John Jay, and others, 
was presented to Congress, asking for a copyright meas- 
ure similar in principle to that which was enacted in 
1 89 1. The memorial was ordered printed and was 
referred to a committee, from which no report was made. 

In 1853, George P. Putnam, writing on behalf of the 
leading publishers of New York, including Charles 
Scribner, William H. Appleton, Mason Brothers, and 
others, addressed a letter to Mr. Everett, Secretary 
of State, recommending the framing of a copyright 
convention with Great Britain. 

Charles Sumner, then Chairman of the Senate Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, interested himself in the 
subject, and reported to the Senate a treaty drafted 
by Edward Everett and himself. The proposal had 
the approval of President Fillmore, but it was met in 
Congress with a storm of remonstrance. 

In 1854, President Pierce secured an additional 
article extending the time limit for the exchange of 
ratifications, but the Senate allowed the treaty to ex- 
pire without action. 

In 1867, Mr. Samuel M. Arnell, of Tennessee, secured 
the passage of a resolution in the House of Representa- 
tives directing the Joint Library Committee to inquire 
into the subject of international copyright, and to make 
a report. Such a report was presented to the House in 
1868 by Mr. J. G. Baldwin, of Massachusetts, accom- 
panied by a bill which was based upon a draft submitted 



86 Orville H. Piatt 

from the Copyright Association of New York by W. 
C. Bryant, President, and George P. Putnam, Secretary. 
This bill secured copyright to foreign authors, with the 
condition that their books should be manufactured 
in the United States. It was referred to the Joint 
Committee on the Library, from which it never 
emerged. 

In 1868, the American Copyright Association was 
reorganized in response to a letter headed " Justice to 
Authors and to Artists," which was issued by a commit- 
tee comprising George P. Putnam, Dr. S. I. Prime, Henry 
Iverson, and James Parton. Of this Association, 
Mr. Bryant was made President. At the instance of 
this Association, a bill was prepared, which was intro- 
duced into the House in 18 71 by S. S. Cox of Ohio, 
and in the Senate by John Sherman, also of Ohio. 
The bill, however, stirred up the usual flock of adverse 
petitions, as a result of which it was reported unfavor- 
ably by the Joint Committee on the Library, which at 
that time had charge of copyright business. 

In 1870, the so-called Clarendon Treaty was proposed 
through Mr. Thornton, the British Minister at Washing- 
ton. The proposed treaty gave to the authors and 
artists of each country the privilege of copyright in the 
other by registering the work within three months of 
the date of the original publication. 

In 1872, a bill was again presented from the Pub- 
lishers' Association, which provided that the American 
edition of the foreign work securing American copy- 
right should be manufactured in this country, and that 
the American register of copyright should be made 
within one month of the date of the original publication. 
In the same year, the draft of a bill was submitted by 
Mr. John P. Morton, publisher of Louisville, under which 



Work for International Copyright 87 

any American publisher was to be at liberty to reprint 
the work of a foreign author on the condition of making 
payment to such author of a ten per cent, royalty. 

Later in the same year a similar measure was intro- 
duced by Mr. Beck and Mr. Sherman providing that 
the royalty should be five per cent. Both of these 
bills were buried in the Library Committee. 

In 1873, Senator Lot M. Morrill of Maine, on behalf 
of the Library Committee, reported adversely to the 
consideration by Congress of any international copy- 
right bill on the ground that " there was no unanimity 
of opinion among those interested in the measure." 

In 1874, Mr. Henry B. Banning, of Ohio, introduced 
into the House the sixth international copyright bill, 
which secured copyright for foreign authors on the 
simple condition of reciprocity. The bill was referred 
to the Committee on Patents where it remained. 

In 1878, a project for a copyright convention or 
treaty was submitted on behalf of the PubHshers' 
Association to Mr. Evarts, then Secretary of State, 
and in 1880, the draft of a convention in line with this 
scheme from the publishers was submitted by Mr. 
Lowell to Lord Granville. 

In 1880, a petition was submitted to Congress, 
signed by President Woolsey, of Yale, and by a number 
of authors, publishers, and printers, asking for the 
enactment of a bill extending to foreign authors, 
composers, and designers the privilege of copyright in 
the United States. 

In 1882, Mr. Robinson, of New York, presented a bill 
giving consideration to the whole subject of copyright, 
domestic and international. It was referred to the 
Committee on Patents, where it was buried. 

In 1883, the eighth international copyright bill was 



88 Orville H. Piatt 

introduced by Mr. Patrick A. Collins, of Massachusetts. 
This also was buried in the Committee on Patents. 

In 1884, the ninth international copyright bill was 
introduced into the House by Mr. Dorsheimer, of New 
York. This provided simply for the extension to 
foreign authors of the privileges enjoyed by the citizens 
or residents of the United States. This bill was ap- 
proved by the Copyright League, and was favorably 
reported to the House by the Committee on the 
Judiciary, to which it had been referred. It reached 
the stage of being discussed in the House, but a resolu- 
tion to fix a date for its final consideration was defeated. 

President Arthur, in his first annual message, reported 
to Congress that negotiations for an International 
Copyright Convention were in hopeful progress. The 
President, however, deemed it inadvisable to complete 
such negotiation until Congress should by statute fix 
the extent of the privileges to be secured in the United 
States by foreign holders of copyright. This country 
was accordingly not represented at the convention 
that was called in Berne in 1886, which resulted in 
bringing the states of Europe into copyright relations 
with each other. 

In the same year a bill was introduced into the House 
by Mr. English dealing with international copyright 
in dramatic compositions. It was referred to the 
Judiciary Committee, which took no action. 

In 1885, President Cleveland permitted the envoy 
of the United States to be present at the Berne Con- 
ference as a delegate, but without the power of com- 
mitting the Government to any action. 

In 1885, The American (Authors') Copyright League 
was reorganized with Mr. Lowell as President and Mr. 
Stedman as Vice-President. Mr. Piatt had long shown a 



Work for International Copyright 89 

keen interest in the purpose of the Copyright Leagues 
and had come into personal relations with a number of 
those who were working to secure justice to authors. 
His first official connection with the movement, however, 
was when on the 13th of January, 1886, he secured 
unanimous consent for a resolution authorizing the 
Committee on Patents to take testimony relating to a 
bill introduced by his colleague General Hawley to es- 
tablish an international copyright. The bill of Senator 
Hawley was substantially identical with that which had 
been introduced a year back by Mr. Dorsheimer. It 
was referred to the Senate Committee on Patents. A 
similar bill was introduced in the House by J. Randolph 
Tucker of Virginia, and was referred to the Committee 
on Judiciary. 

Both committees failed to make any report, and the 
cause of copyright appeared, therefore, to be no further 
advanced than at the time when it was first brought to 
the attention of the Senate in 1837 by Henry Clay, but 
the leaven of half a century's teaching had been 
working both with the public and with Congress. 

In 1886, President Cleveland, in his message of 
December 6th, gave to the movement a more emphatic 
endorsement than had been given by any of his prede- 
cessors. At the request of the representatives of the 
Publishers' Committee, Mr. Cleveland included in his 
message the following paragraph: 

The drift of sentiment in civilized communities toward 
full recognition of the rights of property in the creations 
of the human intellect has brought about the adoption 
by many important nations of an international copyright 
convention, which was signed at Berne on the i8th of 
September, 1886. Inasmuch as the Constitution gives to 
Congress the power "to promote the progress of science and 



90 Orville H. Piatt 

useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and 
inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings 
and discoveries," this Government did not feel warranted 
in becoming a signatory pending the action of Congress 
upon measures of international copyright now before it, 
but the right of adhesion to the Berne Convention here- 
after has been reserved. I trust the subject will receive 
at your hands the attention it deserves, and that the just 
claims of authors, so urgently pressed, will be duly heeded. 

The action of the Convention of Berne in bringing 
into copyright relations with each other nearly all of 
the states of Europe unquestionably had its effect 
upon sentiment in the United States, and prepared the 
way for the work which was to be accomplished a little 
later by Mr. Piatt and other leaders in Congress whose 
interest he had secured in the undertaking. 

The Secretary of the American Publishers' Copy- 
right League, from its re-organization in 1866 to the 
present time, has been George Haven Putnam. The 
Secretaries of the Authors' League have been suc- 
cessively George P. Lathrop, George W. Green, and 
Robert Underwood Johnson, who was elected in 1888. 
The two associations carried on a systematic campaign 
of "education," as a result of which the press through- 
out the country declared itself overwhelmingly in favor 
of the reform, and petitions urging copyright law rained 
in upon Congress from educators and leading citizens 
generally. 

In 1888, a Joint Campaign Committee was formed, 
representing the authors, publishers, printers, the 
Typographical Union and other interests, which had 
arrived at an agreement upon a bill believed to be 
practicable. During the year ending March, 1891, Mr. 
Johnson acted as a secretary of this joint committee; 
and its Chairman was Dr. Edward Eggleston, whose 



Work for International Copyright 91 

service and personal influence in Washington proved 
very valuable. The publishers were represented on the 
Committee by Charles Scribner and W. W. Appleton. 
The labor of framing the successive bills fell chiefly 
to the members and to the counsel of the Publishers' 
Committee. 

In 1888, Senator Chace, of Rhode Island, reported 
favorably from the Patents Committee a bill that had 
been introduced by himself, and a similar bill was re- 
ported from the Judiciary Committee of the House by 
Patrick A. Collins, of Massachusetts. The Chace bill, 
with some amendment, passed the Senate on the 9th of 
May, 1888, by a vote of 35 to 10. It was reported 
favorably by the Judiciary Committee of the House, 
but no further action could be secured. 

The first draft of the bill, which was submitted to 
Senator Chace by the Joint Committee of the Authors 
and Publishers, provided that foreign books securing 
American copyright must be printed in the United 
States, but permitted the importation of cliches of the 
type, or of duplicates of the plates which had been 
prepared for printing the original editions. It was 
contended that for certain classes of books the necessity 
of doing the typesetting twice instead of dividing this 
cost between an English and an American edition, 
would involve a wasteful expense, the burden of which 
would have to be shared between the readers, the 
authors, and the publishers. On the other hand, the 
Typographical Unions insisted that a provision for 
American typesetting was essential for their trade 
interests, and that unless such a provision should be 
inserted, they would be under the necessity of opposing 
the bill. 

It was the opinion of Senator Chace, and of other 
of the Congressional friends of copyright, that the 



92 Orville H. Piatt 

co-operation of the Unions would be very important, 
while their influence against the bill in committee and 
through their friends in the House would probably be 
sufficiently powerful to prevent its passage, at least in 
the near future. It was, therefore, decided by the 
authors and publishers of the two leagues to accept 
on this point the contentions of the typographers and 
to utilize their co-operation. The International Typo- 
graphical Union selected as its representative on the 
Joint Campaign Committee Mr. John L. Kennedy, of 
the Washington Union, whose service proved valuable 
in more ways than one. 

The advocates of honest dealing in literary affairs, 
at the beginning of the new RepubHcan administration 
of 1889, found their cause still far from success, but 
with the sentiment of the public appreciably aroused, 
and with an increasingly intelligent interest on the part 
of leaders in the two Houses. 

President Harrison in his first message laconically 
expressed the opinion that the enactment of an inter- 
national copyright law would be "eminently wise and 
just." Missionary work with Congress began at once, 
and the Copyright Leagues set about creating a senti- 
ment at the capital commensurate with the feeHng 
that had already been created outside. 

In the Senate, Mr. Piatt and Mr. Hoar, in the House 
Mr. Lodge, Mr. Simonds of Connecticut, Mr. McKinley 
of Ohio, Mr. Adams of Illinois, Mr. Breckenridge of 
Kentucky, Mr. Wilson of West Virginia, and Mr. 
Butterworth of Ohio, were strong advocates, while 
Speaker Reed lent his all-powerful aid. The most 
active opponents of the bill in the Senate were Beck 
of Kentucky, Daniel of Virginia, George of Mississippi, 
and Regan of Texas. Before the close of the year, 



Work for International Copyright 93 

Mr. Chace resigned from the Senate, and on his urgent 
advice it was decided that Mr. Piatt, who was then the 
second member of the Patents Committee, and oldest 
in point of committee service, should take charge of 
the Copyright bill. The selection was most fortunate. 
The task of the management of such a bill was difficult 
and delicate, calling for a full measure of patience, 
persistency, sagacity, and tact, familiarity with parlia- 
mentary procedure, sympathetic acquaintance with 
the personalities and foibles of his associates, and the 
capacity to deal both with the leaders of the Senate and 
the managers of the House. 

The successful guidance of the bill to ultimate enact- 
ment on the very last night of the Congress was de- 
pendent on innumerable incidents, any one of which, 
bunglingly handled, would have contained potential 
disaster, and every one of which, under skilful pilotage, 
contributed to the final triumph. Mr. Piatt on the 
very first working day of the session introduced a bill 
providing for international copyright. A little later 
he reported favorably from the Patents Committee 
another bill, differing only in the correction of informal- 
ities, and at the earliest opportunity he asked the Sen- 
ate to consider this bill as in committee of the whole. 
But strategically he did not think it wise to press his 
measure in the Senate until it could be ascertained more 
clearly as to the sentiment of the House. So long as he 
could be instrumental in securing legislation, he was 
indifferent whether the measure bore his name. In the 
House, the Judiciary Committee and the Patents Com- 
mittee each had reported bills. The Judiciary Com- 
mittee's bill reported by Mr. Adams first got the ear 
of the House through a special order. It was badly 
amended and then beaten by a vote of 99 to 125. This 



94 Orville H. Piatt 

defeat served only as a guide to the friends of interna- 
tional copyright for future effort. A few days later 
Mr. Simonds introduced another bill on the lines of the 
bill originally introduced by Mr. Chace two years earlier, 
in accordance with the programme of American writers, 
typographers, and publishers. This new measure, in 
effect, was promptly reported from the Patents Com- 
mittee of which Mr. Simonds was a member. It was 
not considered, however, during the strenuous days 
of the first session of the Fifty-first Congress, and its 
friends devoted the time until the next session should 
meet in still further arousing public sentiment and 
personally canvassing the members of the House. 
President Harrison in his annual message of Decem- 
ber I, 1890, renewed his recommendation "in favor of 
legislation affording just copyright protection to foreign 
authors on a footing of reciprocal advantages for our 
authors abroad," and on the very next day, the second 
day of the session, on call of committees, Mr. Simonds, 
on behalf of the Patents Committee, called up his bill. 
In the face of every known device for parliamentary 
obstruction the bill was passed on December 3, 1890, by 
a vote of 139 to 95. As the Senate of the Fiftieth Con- 
gress, nearly identical in membership with the Senate 
of the Fifty-first Congress, had passed substantially the 
same measure two years before by a majority of over 
three to one (35 to 10) the vote in the House was hailed 
as a virtual achievement of the reform. It proved, 
however, to be only the prelude of one of the hardest 
contests in the Senate's history. 

It was at this point that Mr. Piatt assumed active 
management of the campaign. The Senate was en- 
gaged in one of its historic struggles, precipitated by 
the Democratic victory in November, and the deter- 



Work for International Copyright 95 

mination of the Republican leaders, if possible, to secure 
the enactment of the Federal Elections law before a 
Democratic House should come into control. There 
were other important measures pressing for considera- 
tion which were earnestly desired by Senators on whom 
the friends of international copyright depended for 
support, and the time at the disposal of Congress be- 
fore the 4th of March was distressingly meagre. To 
secure even an opportunity to discuss a measure was 
no easy task, yet in face of the eagerness to get at the 
Pure Food bill, the Nicaraguan Canal bill, and the 
Revenue Cutter bill, Mr. Piatt was called upon not only 
to secure discussion, but to insure enactment of a bill 
which was not popularly compelling, which was the 
object of bitter and mercenary opposition, which was 
objected to by certain publishers because it deprived 
them of discreditable gain, and by a great mass of people 
who had been cunningly convinced that international 
copyright would mean an increase in the price of books 
and would be a blow at the education of the poor. In 
the face of such opposition it was manifest that in order 
to receive any consideration the bill must submit to 
some amendment. The delicate task with the Senator 
who had it in charge was to distinguish where it would 
be safe to yield without destroying altogether, and 
where to remain steadfast without subjecting the 
measure to the certainty of defeat. A necessary first 
step was to insure consideration for the bill. Mr. 
Johnson, secretary of the joint committee of the various 
organizations favoring the measure, having reported 
for duty, Mr. Piatt counselled him to call upon the 
members of the Steering Committee, on which were 
Senators Hoar and Evarts, and secure for the bill as 
high a position as possible in the regular order of 



96 Orville H. Piatt 

business. This was done, and the copyright bill was 
placed second, a labor bill having already been 
promised first place. This first move of Senator 
Piatt was of the most vital importance. 

On the 9th of February, 1891, less than a month 
before Congress must adjourn, Mr. Piatt, watching his 
opportunity, moved to consider the House bill as in 
committee of the whole. Following his usual practice, 
he trespassed upon the patience of the Senate only to 
make the briefest necessary explanation of the purpose 
of the legislation. The bill, he reminded them, was 
practically the same as the Chace bill which had passed 
the Senate two years earlier, differing in principle only 
in that its application was to depend upon the adoption 
of similar legislation by foreign countries: 

I will simply say that the bill proceeds upon one broad 
fundamental principle, and that is, that what a man fashions 
by his brain, his genius, his imagination, or his ingenuity, 
is property just as much as what he fashions by his hands 
or acquires by manual or other labor, and that being 
property, it should be property the world over and should 
be recognized as such. If an American writes a book, the 
right to publish that book should be recognized as property 
not only in this country, as it is now under the Constitu- 
tion, but as property everywhere. If a citizen of another 
country writes a book, the right to publish that book should 
be as much property in this country as in his own country. 

/That is the broad principle upon which this bill rests — 
the protection of property, for which governments are 
instituted. The principle has been applied in the'case of 
patents, and not a little of the growth and prosperity of 
the country is due to the fact of the recognition by this 
Government that a foreigner who invents a new machine 
or discovers a new process shall be entitled to secure a 
patent for the same in this country. 



Work for International Copyright 97 

The Constitution puts authors first in saying that Con- 
gress may secure to them exclusive rights; it puts them 
before inventors; but the legislation of the country has 
extended the provisions of the Constitution in the matter 
of inventions very much further than it has in the matter 
of authorship and those who come in under the generic 
term of authors. 

I believe, mj^self, no measure before this Congress is so 
calculated to enhance not only the intellectual but the 
material growth of this country as this Copyright bill, and 
I trust it will pass, and pass without amendment. As I 
said, we have waited fifty-three years for this opportunity, 
and this opportunity may be wholly lost by amendments 
in the Senate. 

I do not know that I would say that this is a perfect bill, 
but it is a bill which has had long consideration by com- 
mittees of the Senate and of the House of Representatives. 
It comes to us from the House, and now is our opportunity 
to obtain the passage of such a law. If there is anything 
in it which needs further examination, which would call 
for further legislation, the way for the people who desire 
international copyright to obtain it is to pass the bill while 
we have the opportiuiity to pass it, and establish the 
principle. Then if it needs further application, we can 
trust to the future that justice will be done. 

In spite of his appeal for the passage of the bill in 
the form in which it came from the House, Mr. Piatt 
was obliged to yield to several amendments, which, 
in the opinion of friends of the bill, detracted from its 
efficacy, but which were essential to securing its passage 
through the Senate. For more than a week, with 
measures of urgent importance pressing upon the 
Senate, and with the end of Congress in sight, Mr. 
Piatt held the Senate to the consideration of the Copy- 
right bill, arguing, placating, urging, pleading. He 



98 Orville H. Piatt 

spoke as seldom as possible, but a few things he felt 
that he must say. For one, he could not tolerate the 
lax notions prevailing about the rights of property : 

People see the acquisition of property in large amounts 
and then jump to the conclusion that some man whom they 
call a millionaire has not acquired his property by direct 
and honest methods, and the result is that they have no 
respect for that man's property any more than they have 
for the gambler's. But they do not draw the line between 
property honestly acquired and property which has been 
acquired dishonestly. They do not draw the line between 
property for which a good fair equivalent has been given 
and property for which an honest and fair equivalent has 
not been given. So there has arisen in this country a 
tendency which, if not checked, will bring us to ruin sooner 
than is generally supposed — a sentiment not to regard the 
rights of property honestly acquired. 

Of all the property which is the subject of acquisition, 

Hterary and intellectual and artistic property is the most 

honestly acquired. A man who has devoted his Hfe to 

letters, a man who has devoted his Hfe to art, who has 

been its slave and its devotee, is as honestly possessed of 

the property which he produces in that way as any man 

in the United States is honestly possessed of any property. 

I wish to touch right here on the idea that a copyright 

is a monopoly. It is not a monopoly in the strict sense 

or in the legal sense, or in the right sense of that word. 

It is rather a property right. The right of a man to publish 

his book and to control the publication of his book, to 

publish his engraving and to control the publication of his 

engraving, to reproduce and control the reproduction of his 

painting, is a right, and a right of property, just as, when 

my friend from Michigan breeds a fine horse, that horse is 

his property, and no other man can use it; he has a right 

to control the use of it. 

It is not in the sense in which the term is used a monopoly. 



Work for International Copyright 99 

It is the right to use one's property. A man buys a house. 
He alone has the right to use it. He has a right to say who 
shall use it ; he has a right to rent it to a tenant, and no 
other man shall set his foot in it; no other man can come 
to it; it is his castle; he may kill the man who ruthlessly 
tries to enter it. And yet no one calls him a monopolist. 
This copyright is simply protecting men in their property 
rights. 

With the argument for cheap books he was equally 
out of patience. He declared that no man had a right 
to set up a cry for cheap books, if insisting that they 
must be cheaper, whether stolen or not: 

No man has a right to put up the cry for cheap books 
if that cheapness depends upon appropriation without con- 
sent of the owner, any more than he has for cheap horses 
if to insure that cheapness the rights of the owner are in 
any way to be interfered with or limited or restricted. You 
can have everything cheap if you appropriate it without 
the consent of the owner; there is no trouble about that. 
There is no species of property in the world which you can- 
not cheapen by appropriation. Sometimes I think that 
the moral sense of the community is entirely dulled on this 
subject. 

Finally he made his appeal for international copy- 
right on broad and general grounds because he believed 
it was just and beneficial. 

I believe this Congress cannot be engaged in any work 
nobler, or grander, or more beneficial, or more calculated 
to develop this nation than to protect its literature and its 
art, and to so act and to so legislate that its literature and 
its art shall be protected wherever the sun shines, in other 
countries as well as in this country. I believe by that 
means you will build up a literature, a standard of thought, 
a standard of intellectual effort, that you will build up a 



loo Orville H. Piatt 

standard of art in this country, which will elevate our whole 
people. 

What is this country for? Is it for the mere matter of 
getting things cheap for the people? Is that all there is 
for government in these days to think of? Has it come to 
this, that all the wheels of government must be turned 
to get things cheap for the people at the expense of the 
property and the rights of others if need be? Is not the 
Government to build up, is it not to develop, is it not to 
make a higher and nobler race of our people, and how can 
we reach that any better than by protecting, by stimulating, 
by encouraging intellectual effort and artistic effort? 

I want to tell Senators that the brain of our people is 
the true and I might say the only source of our national 
wealth. It is what our people think. When they think 
on a higher plane they are the richer. The higher the 
plane of intellectual development, and the higher the plane 
of artistic development the richer are our people with a 
wealth that is not evanescent, but a wealth that endures, 
and a wealth that endures not only in this world, but is the 
only wealth that a man can take out of it. 

Senator Piatt's most serious embarrassment came 
from amendments offered by Frye and Sherman. The 
bill as it passed the House provided that the two copies 
of books required to be deposited in the Library of 
Congress for purposes of international copyright should 
be "printed from type set within the United States or 
from plates made therefrom." Frye moved to include 
in this requirement, maps, charts, dramatical and 
musical compositions, engravings, cuts, prints, photo- 
graphs, chromos, and lithographs. Sherman moved to 
amend the clause prohibiting the importation of books 
printed abroad, enjoying the privilege of amended 
copyright, by striking out the word "prohibited'' 
and inserting in lieu thereof "subject to the duties 



Work for International Copyright loi 

provided by law." The Frye amendment was adopted 
by a vote of 27 to 24, the Sherman amendment by a 
vote of 25 to 24. Either one of these amendments, had 
they not been attended to in Conference, would have 
seriously affected the chances of passing the bill, and if 
the Sherman amendment had become a law, it would 
have practically nullified the purpose of the legislation. 
Frye's amendment was subsequently modified so as 
to apply only to lithographs and photographs, and the 
Sherman amendment went out altogether. 

At last, on February i8th, he secured a vote on the 
bill, and it was passed by a majority of 36 to 14, badly 
amended it is true, but in such form as to give some 
hope of an adjustment. A conference with the House 
was asked, and Mr. Piatt, Mr. Hiscock, and Mr. Gray 
were appointed conferees for the Senate. Only four- 
teen days remained before the statutory adjournment 
of Congress, and ten days elapsed before the House took 
the question up and acceded to the Senate's request. 
It is an interesting coincidence that the leading member 
of the Conference Committee on the part of the House, 
Mr. Simonds, should have been a Connecticut man, so 
that it fell to the lot of two representatives of a single 
State to play the most important part in the culmina- 
tion of fifty years' endeavor. It is to be remembered, 
too, that General Hawley of Connecticut was the first 
to introduce a pure and simple copyright bill in 1885. 
Even after the bill had gone to Conference the fight 
against it was continued, and it was then that some 
of the most skilful manoeuvres were resorted to. On 
March 2d, the House adopted the report of the Con- 
ference Committee, which eliminated some of the ob- 
jectionable Senate amendments, but the Senate refused 
to recede. There was a further struggle for twenty- 



I02 Orville H. Piatt 

four hours, one proposition for compromise after another 
being made, and finally after midnight on the 3d of 
March, the Senate accepted the Conference report and 
about 2 A.M. passed the bill. Having been signed by 
the Vice-President, the bill was taken by Mr. Lodge 
to the House for consideration. After its passage in 
the House (at about 3 a.m.) and the signature by the 
Speaker, the bill was hurriedly engrossed (under the 
immediate supervision of Mr. Lodge, who stood over the 
clerks until they had finished their work) in order that 
it might be sent to the President at the White House. 
According to the usual routine, this would have been the 
end of the matter, but the opponents of international 
copyright were not yet prepared to give up the fight. 
Before the Senate had received information of the 
passage of the bill by the House, Senator Pasco moved 
to reconsider, and when the Senate adjourned at 4 a.m. 
that motion was pending. The Senate re-assembled 
some hours later, and about 11 a. m., March 4th, voted 
down Senator Pasco's motion, and the President, being 
then at the Capitol, signed the bill. 

In the history of legislation, there have been few 
measures which clutched success so narrowly from the 
hands of opportunity. 

At the moment Mr. Piatt received the full measure of 
appreciation for the work he had so faithfully performed ; 
he was a guest of honor at a banquet given in New York 
on April 13th, to celebrate the abolition of literary 
piracy, 1 and his services were recognized in other ways. 

> At this dinner, which was presided over by E. C. Stedman, and 
at which were present George WilHam Curtis, Henry Cabot Lodge, 
and Count Emile de Keratry, Robert Underwood Johnson in the 
course of a response to a toast said : 

"I could name a dozen men at this board and a dozen elsewhere, 
but for the aid of any one of whom at some critical time we should 



Work for International Copyright 103 

The leaders of the movement were generous in their 
acknowledgment. The decoration of the French Legion 
of Honor which was conferred upon Messrs. Adams 
and Simonds, who retired from the House of Represen- 
tatives on the day the bill was passed, was offered to 
him but could not be accepted because he was still in 
office; but the Cercle de la Librairie and the Syndicat 
de la Propriete Litteraire et Artistique of Paris sent to 
him by special messenger a gold medal struck in recog- 
nition of his services to the cause of literature. The 
medal was brought to this country by Count E. de 
Keratry in June, 1891, who delivered also a letter, of 
which the following is a translation: 

Paris, June i6, 1891. 
Senator Platt of Connecticut. 

Washington. 
Senator: 

You have decided by your influence the vote of the 
American Senate upon copyright in international relations. 
You have affirmed "that a product of a man's brain is his 
property"; you have caused it to be recognized "that there 
can no longer be any difference between an American and a 

not have had the happy fortune that brings us here to-night. There 
was at least one time, however, when the identification of one man 
with the success or failure of this movement was complete, when 
in fact its fortune appeared to rest wholly and for many days upon 
the tact and devotion of one Senator. I can think of no parallel 
to the situation save the anecdote of Col. Jones's body servant 
in St. Mary's Parish in Louisiana. A visitor conveyed through 
the bayous of the Teche inquired of his darkey boatman, Wesley, 
whether his former master was connected with the White League. 
"'Cunnel Jones connect wid de White League?' queried Wesley 
in unaffected astonishment. 'Yes, a member of the League.' 
'Cunnel Jones a member ob de White League? Cunnel Jones? 
Why, bress de Lord, Massa, Cunnel Jones am de White League.' 
In those last despairing days in the Senate, Senator Platt was not 
merely in charge of the Copyright bill, he was the copyright cause. " 



I04 Orville H. Piatt 

foreign author and that the latter henceforth ought to be 
placed, with you, on the same footing with the native 
author." You have said with regard to France that the 
hour has long since come to grant reciprocity for her decree 
of 1852, which declared all piracy of a foreign work, a crime. 
It is our duty to express our keen gratitude for the 
great part you have taken "in this triumph of a just cause." 
Our Cercle de la Librairie and Syndicat des Associations 
Protectrices des CEuvres de I'Esprit et de I'Art have had 
made in your name a medal to bear witness to this legiti- 
mate sentiment, and we are happy to have been commis- 
sioned to transmit it to you. 

Will the Senator accept the expression of our high regard. 
(The President of the Cercle de la Librairie 
and the Syndicat de la Propri6t6 
Litteraire et Artistique.) 

(Signed) A. Templier. 

(The Secretary General of the Syndicat.) 
(Signed) Germond de Lavigne. 

To Robert Underwood Johnson, Secretary of the 
American (Authors') Copyright League, who had 
written him an expression of thanks, he replied a few 
days after the adjournment of Congress: 

The fact that I am still fighting over again night by 
night, in my sleep, the copyright struggle, will show you how 
deeply it took hold of me, and how nearly it came to up- 
setting me. I have a feeling that I was not very courteous 
to its friends while the contest was in progress, so morose 
and irritable, all of which I know they will forgive me for. 
I am very glad that it resulted in success. As I have 
written some of the pubHshers, the fate of copyright is now 
in their hands. The sentiment that it was a bill for the 
benefit of the pubHshers and against the interests of the 
people took a much deeper root than we at the time realized, 
although we felt its strength in a measure. But in talking 



Work for International Copyright 105 

with people since the close of Congress I am surprised to 
see how thoroughly and completely that idea has per- 
meated the country. There is no way of meeting it except 
by publishing editions of books copyrighted by foreign 
authors at a low figure. The publishers ought to see this, 
and ought to make a point of it. A twenty-five cent edi- 
tion of a popular foreign author's copyrighted book, fairly 
executed, scattered as far as the market can be reached, 
with attention called to it in the public press as being one 
of the first results of the copyright law, will do more for 
copyright than anything else. I don't beheve that you, 
living in a publisher's atmosphere, can realize fully the 
force of this, but you can to some extent. 

To Dana Estes, the Boston publisher, he wrote: 

I confess that there were times when the passage of 
the Copyright bill seemed hopeless, and I do think that 
persistent and patient work had something to do with the 
final result, over which I think I was as much gratified 
as any of the persons interested in the passage of the bill. 
Indeed, it is either my misfortune or good fortune always 
to feel more keenly than those directly concerned, an 
interest in whatever I undertake. It is wearing work 
under such circumstances, and sometimes I got irritable 
and cross, and as I look back over this contest, I feel as if 
I had not always been patient and courteous to those who 
were here looking after it, so perhaps you have a better 
opinion of me for having stayed away. 

I think copyright has come to stay, unless publishers 
put up the price of books or make some combination which 
will be stigmatized as a trust. I don't believe they intend 
to do this or that it would be for their advantage to do it, 
and I trust you may steer clear of it. The publisher who 
first gets control of the work of a popular EngHsh author 
and publishes a cheap edition of it, and forces a wide cir- 
culation, will do more for the copyright law than we have 
been able to do in passing it. The objection which made 



io6 Orville H. Piatt 

votes against it was the cry of monopoly and dearer books. 
The pubHshers can silence that cry, and it is very important 
that they should do so if possible, before the next session 
of Congress. I need not say to you that the spirit of social- 
ism is rampant in the country, and the regard for property 
rights of all kinds is being weakened by demagogues and 
by great masses of people who want to get something that 
does n't belong to them, and the right of property in the book 
or other creation of man's intellect or genius is harder to 
understand and appreciate, and therefore less likely to be 
respected than the property right to real estate or to 
other kinds of personal property. It is right along this 
line that the danger lies. It will not do to aggravate this 
sentiment in respect to copyright. I want to see some 
publisher try the experiment of publishing the copyright 
work of a foreign author for the million. 

Great as were his services to the cause of international 
copyright in 1891, they did not by any means mark 
the extent of his achievements. Throughout his life 
he remained the steadfast friend of those who were 
interested in improving the copyright laws, and they 
invariably turned to him in the hour of need. The 
law of March 4, 1891 was far from adequate, but it 
was the establishment of the principle for which the 
authors of the English-speaking world had been striv- 
ing. It proved possible by means of the reciprocity 
provisions in the statute to bring the United States 
into copyright relations with all important European 
countries. 

In 1897, when the playwrights of America planned 
to secure the enactment of an improved law for the 
protection of dramatic copyrights they turned instinc- 
tively to Mr. Piatt, and in the Fifty-fourth Congress, 
largely through his efforts, a bill was enacted which 
elicited from Bronson Howard, the President of the 



Work for International Copyright 107 

American Dramatists Club, the following appreciative 
letter : 

201 West 78TH Street, New York, 
January 11, 1897. 
Honorable 0. H. Platt, 

United States Senate. 
Dear Sir: 

I beg to thank you most earnestly on behalf of the Amer- 
ican Dramatists Club for the great interest you have 
taken, with other members of the committee of which you 
are chairman, in the passage of the new law, giving pro- 
tection to dramatic writers and to managers in America. 
The importance of the new act reaches beyond even the 
justice it extends to your fellow American citizens. It will 
raise the standard of the American theatre in every re- 
spect, and so work a great public good. Especially it will 
tend strongly and with certainty to the development of a 
national dramatic literature worthy of the country; some- 
thing impossible to establish under the old law. 

In due season, the defects which were inevitable in 
the law of 1891 began to assert themselves. Complaints 
arose from authors of Germany, France, Italy, and other 
European states, against provisions of the law, which, 
in effect, discriminated against all writers whose works 
originated in any other language than English. In the 
Fifty-eighth Congress, although no longer a member 
of the Patents Committee, at the request of George 
Haven Putnam, Secretary of the American Pub- 
lishers' Copyright League, he introduced a bill, 
which had been drafted under the instructions of 
the Executive Committee of the League, to remedy 
this injustice, which threatened to lead to the abrogation 
of the international copyright arrangements between 
Germany and France and the United States. The 



io8 Orville H. Piatt 

purpose of the bill was to relieve the foreign author 
in the difficulty he experienced in complying with the 
typesetting clause, by reason of the fact that his book 
was in a foreign language. The act gave him com- 
plete copyright for one year, including the absolute 
right of translation, but in order to continue the term 
of protection beyond the year, he was obliged to typeset 
his work in the original language in the United States, or 
to typeset a translation of it, in which case he was 
protected both in the translation and in the original 
work. If he complied with the typesetting clause as to 
the original work he secured the absolute right of trans- 
lation for the entire term of the copyright. 

It was no light task to secure the enactment of any 
kind of copyright legislation, and on a smaller scale 
this measure underwent some of the vicissitudes which 
beset the original bill in the Fifty-first Congress, but 
finally during the last week of the Congress, it became a 
law, thus proving to be almost the last public act of 
Mr. Piatt's life. On March 3, 1905, he received from 
George Haven Putnam, Secretary of the American 
Publishers' Copyright League, this letter: 

Dear Mr. Senator: 

I desire to extend, on behalf of the Publishers' Copyright 
League and of others on both sides of the Atlantic, authors 
and publishers, who are interested in the protection of 
literary property, our cordial and appreciative thanks for 
the patient, capable, and all effective service that has been 
rendered by the Senior Senator from Connecticut during the 
past three years in connection with the measure that has 
now secured enactment in Congress. I have this morning 
a report from the President that the bill shall receive his 
signature. Your friendly co-operation in this particular 
undertaking is in line with a long series of similar services 



Work for International Copyright 109 

that you have been able to render to the cause of literary- 
property and of national ethics. 

Mr. Putnam was able later to report to Mr. Piatt 
that if the serious injustice of which the Continental 
authors and their representatives had complained had 
not been remedied by the amendment in question, the 
copyright convention between Germany and the United 
States would probably have been terminated. The first 
steps towards such cancellation of the convention had, 
in fact, at the instance of the German Copyright League, 
already been taken in the Reichstag. 

That the world of letters gratefully remembered the 
service he had done the cause of literature was shown 
only a few weeks later, when the word passed over the 
wires that the end had come. Among the messages 
received at the house of mourning in Judea, was this : 

The American Copyright League respectfully offers you 
its sympathy. Your honored husband was the father of 
international copyright, and deserves to be gratefully re- 
membered by all lovers of justice and of letters. This 
organization will be represented on Tuesday. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman, 

President, 
Robert Underwood Johnson, 

Secretary. 

Resolutions were also adopted by the American 
Publishers' Copyright League, as follows: 

The Executive Committee of the American Publishers' 
Copyright League feels that in the death of the Honorable 
Orville H. Piatt, of Connecticut, the friends of copyright 
have lost one of their most efficient and steadfast support- 
ers, and one upon whose judgment and experience they 
could always rely. 



no Orville H. Piatt 

The passage of the International Copyright act of 1891 
was chiefly due to Senator Piatt, and his interest in the 
cause of copyright continued until his death. 

The Executive Committee records upon its minutes the 
gratitude of the American Pubhshers' Copyright League 
to Senator Piatt, and its appreciation of his great ability 
as a statesman, his high sense of public duty, and will never 
forget the kindness and consideration he has always 
shown to all members of the League. The President is 
directed to send a copy of this resolution to the family of 
Senator Piatt, and to offer them the sincere sympathy of 
the League. 

W. W. Appleton, President. 
Geo. Haven Putnam, Secretary, 

A few days after Mr. Piatt's death, the following 
appreciative letter from the pen of Robert Underwood 
Johnson, Secretary of the American (Authors') Copy- 
right League, appeared in the New York Evening Post: 

Senator 0. H. Piatt and International Copyright 

To THE Editor of the " Evening Post ": 

Sir: In the press notices of the death of Senator Orville 
H. Piatt I find in the enumeration of his public services 
little or, in some cases, no mention of his activity in the 
campaign for the International Copyright bill of 1891. 

No one who knows the facts will dispute the statement 
that the passage of the bill was due first of all to Senator 
Piatt. His high character, his mastery of the subject, his 
good humor, his tact, and his parliamentary experience 
brought the bill through the numerous vicissitudes which 
beset it in the last eight weeks of the session. It was 
inspiriting to note his undemonstrative but unwearying 
devotion — rallying the friends of the bill again and again, 
gently molhfying the opposition of many enemies, exhorting 
to patience supporters whose favored measure was being 



Work for International Copyright m 

blocked by the bill, and who as the session drew to a close 
were threatening to side-track it if it did not get out of their 
way. Our era of literary piracy was memorable for the 
many statesmen who were enlisted in the defence of literar}'- 
property, but the one man more than any other who ac- 
compHshed the reform was Orville H. Piatt. 

In view of the fact that in the press reports of the obsequies 
of Senator Piatt no mention has been made of the participa- 
tion of authors or publishers, I may be pardoned for saying 
that since his death the two copyright leagues have done 
what they could to honor his memory by recognizing his 
extraordinary services to the cause of justice to literary 
property. Both the American Publishers' Copyright 
League and the American (Authors') Copyright League 
sent to Mrs. Piatt telegrams of sympathy and of grateful 
acknowledgment, and both were ofhcially represented at the 
funeral — the former by its President, Mr. William W. Ap- 
pleton, and, in the absence in Europe of its Secretary, Mr. 
Putnam, by Mr. Frank H. Dodd of the Executive Committee ; 
the latter by its Secretary. It was a matter of great regret 
to Mr. Stedman, the President, that it was impossible for 
him to attend. The Executive Council of the Authors' 
League also sent a wreath. 

I beg the space for these facts lest it might be thought 
that those who know Senator Piatt's pre-eminent service 
were singularly indifferent to his death. 

It is said that republics are ungrateful. This ought, least 
of all, to be true of the republic of letters. 

R. U. Johnson, 
Secretary American Copyright League. 

New York, April 26th. 

On the personal side of Mr. Piatt's work in behalf of 
American publishers and authors during this period, 
Mr. George Haven Putnam writes: 

It was my good fortune, in connection with my work on 
behalf of literary property, to come into personal relations 



112 Orville H. Piatt 

in Washington and in New York with Senator Piatt, 
relations which covered a long series of years. I found 
myself holding the Senator in increasing regard not only 
for clear-headed and wise-minded statesmanship, but for 
his absolute integrity of purpose, freedom from self- 
seeking, and general sweetness of nature. It was this 
combination of sweetness and force in his character, com- 
bined, of course, during the later years of his work in 
Washington, with his wide experience in affairs and know- 
ledge of men, that secured for him so exceptional an in- 
fluence over the opinions and the actions of his associates. 
He was held in afifectionate regard not only by those with 
whom he was in accord on the political issues of the day, 
but by practically all of his political opponents, that is to 
say, by all with whom he came into any personal relations. 
The responsibility came upon him during the years between 
1884 and 1 891 of presenting before successive committees 
of the House and of the Senate the arguments in behalf of 
international copyright, arguments which were, as it was 
claimed, simply a contention on behalf not only of national 
ethics but of the highest intellectual interests of the com- 
munity. In addition to the formal arguments presented in 
the committee rooms, there was, of course, much to be 
done in the matter of personal words with senators and 
representatives, to many of whom the subject was entirely 
unfamiliar. It was in this matter of personal relation and 
in the task of withstanding prejudices that were mainly 
based upon ignorance of the subject, that Senator Piatt's 
influence and service were of inestimable value. 

I recall one occasion, in 1904, when the Committee on 
Patents, of which the Senator had for years been Chairman, 
had, in giving their approval to a provision for a fuller 
measure of protection for works originating on the Conti- 
nent, through a clerical error, connected with this amend- 
ment certain provisions taken from the statute book of 1 89 1 . 
The result of this action would have been a recommendation 
on the part of the Committee on Patents for rescinding the 



Work for International Copyright 113 

international copyright that had been secured in 189 1. I 
was permitted to accompany Senator Piatt to a meeting 
of the Committee, of which at that time Senator McComas, 
of Maryland, was Chairman. To Senator McComas the 
subject of copyright was comparatively new, and he had not 
had direct touch with the previous proceedings. Senator 
Piatt began to explain to the Committee the error that had 
been made in its previous action. He was interrupted 
by the Chairman and by one or two members: "There is 
no necessity for any detailed explanation. Senator; if you 
say the action was wrong, it will, of course, be rescinded. 
Tell us what you want, and you shall have our approval." 
Each man in the room knew not only that Senator Piatt 
understood the subject of copyright, but that any word 
that he had to give on this or on any other matter could 
be absolutely trusted. The people are fortunate when 
their legislative business can be in the hands of men like 
Orville H. Piatt who are not only capable leaders but also 
great citizens. The standard set by him for the conduct of 
the nation's business will prove of inestimable service for 
legislators, and for the nation back of the legislators, for 
the years to come. 

8 



CHAPTER IX 

PROTECTOR OF THE INDIAN 

The Red Man's Most Practical and Useful Friend — Fourteen Years 

with the Committee on Indian Affairs — Prevents 

Mischievous Legislation. 

IT was almost a matter of chance that so much of the 
Connecticut Senator's activity in pubHc Hfe should 
have been turned to a question which up to the time of his 
arrival in Washington had hardly engaged his thoughts 
and which would seem to have as little interest for his 
immediate constituency as any in the numerous group 
of governmental problems. After he had been eight 
years a Senator, he found himself a member of the 
Committee on Indian Affairs, an assignment which few 
sought, and for which he had no special inclination. 
The Chairman of the Committee was Henry L. Dawes 
of Massachusetts, a serious-minded and industrious 
man, who, after distinguished service in the House 
as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, had 
found his peculiar sphere of usefulness in the Senate 
to be the conscientious guardianship of the interests 
of the nation's wards. It was probably at his request 
that Mr. Piatt, who by that time was known as a pains- 
taking and unbeguilable Senator, became a member. 
It is a curious circumstance that for many years the 
fortunes of the Indian should have been so largely 
in the keeping of two Senators who were almost neigh- 
bors in the Berkshire and Litchfield hills, and it was 

114 



Protector of the Indian 115 

a lucky chance that two high-minded men of such 
capacity should have been ready to devote their time 
and talents to a thankless task. 

Except to a limited number of Senators, most of them 
from far western States, matters concerning the Indians 
were of only casual interest, unless, through neglect and 
indifference, something in the nature of a scandal 
developed, as was not infrequently the case; yet the 
questions growing out of the relations of the United 
States with its Indian wards, especially the five civilized 
tribes in the Indian Territory, were for many years 
among the most complicated and difficult problems 
with which Congress had to deal. The treaties and 
agreements with the Indian tribes, some of them dating 
back nearly a century, were continually calling for the 
best legal ability in their interpretation and application 
to constantly arising questions of administration. The 
never-ending conflict between the friends of the Indian 
and the white settlers and avaricious corporations 
encroaching on the reservation forced tangled problems 
upon the legislative branch of the Government. The 
opulent soil of the territory occupied by the Indians 
has always been a lure to the white man, inciting him 
to violence, bribery, and theft; while the extraordinary 
spectacle of nations within a nation, presented by the 
republics of the Indian Territory for many years, 
afforded limitless opportunity not only to evil-minded 
persons, but also to the conscientious legislator. It 
was Mr. Piatt's difficult task for nearly twenty years 
to stand between the despoilers of the Indian on the 
one hand, and his super-serviceable friends on the other, 
— to thwart the schemes of grafters and thieves, while 
tempering the zeal of importunate reformers. It was a 
burden from which he often sought relief, but never 



ii6 Orville H. Piatt 

successfully until a few months before he died, when he 
was able to plead his assignment to the Chairmanship 
of the Judiciary Committee as an excuse from further 
service. So he plodded along, examining with religious 
scrutiny every piece of proposed legislation and the 
wearisome details of every appropriation bill. He was 
scrupulously accurate in his knowledge of the ramifica- 
tions of the Indian question, knew every provision of 
every treaty and agreement, and all the circumstances 
relating to every reservation. 

After Mr. Dawes's retirement from the Senate in 
1893, Piatt was, by common consent, regarded as the 
one man on the Committee to whom other Senators must 
look for guidance in Indian legislation, and the one upon 
whom other leaders depended to see that no improper 
measures were enacted. 

James K. Jones of Arkansas became Chairman under 
the Democratic regime of the Fifty-third Congress in 
1893, but when the Republicans returned to control, 
there was an insistent demand that the Chairmanship 
of the Committee should go to Mr. Piatt. He received 
letters from bishops, college presidents, and friends of 
the Indian everywhere, urging him to take the Chair- 
manship, to which he was in line of succession. Mr. 
Dawes, then Chairman of the Dawes Commission, wrote 
him: 

When I was at Mohonk there was a great deal of talk 
about your taking the Chairmanship of Indian Affairs, 
and the cry was universal that you must take it. I told 
them the reasons of your reluctance, which I thought I 
knew pretty well. But the friends of the Indian the 
country over know the situation, and will sorely grieve 
if you disappoint them. Now I do not know that you owe 
them anything, but I want earnestly to commend to your 



Protector of the Indian 117 

consideration the question whether you are not called 
upon to make the sacrifice, both for the good name of the 
Republican party, and for the good of the Indian. You 
know what I mean. There is no need of further word 
between you and me, or to induce you to do what you 
think is right. 

He was not moved by these appeals, and chose 
instead the Chairmanship of the Committee on Patents, 
which was much more to his liking, and which would 
not be so great a drain upon his energies at a time when 
he was to be occupied in the work of the Committees 
on Judiciary and Finance. 

Into the details of his work on the Indian Affairs 
Committee, it is hardly profitable to go. Important 
though it was, it cuts little figure in the significant 
history of the time, and is of interest now chiefly as an 
illustration of the conscientious treatment of a strangely 
difficult and evanescent problem. He took an im- 
portant part in all legislation aft'ecting the Indians for 
nearly twenty years. His judgment prevailed with his 
associates in innumerable compHcated questions which 
the great majority of Senators had neither time nor in- 
cHnation to study. He had a part in the legislation relat- 
ing to the opening of the " Cherokee Outlet " in 1893 , and 
the withdrawal of government aid to sectarian schools. 
He urged, so far as practicable, the allotment of lands 
among the Indians, but he believed that the Indian 
ought to work his land and not rent it or sell it, as many 
were incHned to do, with the idea of living in idleness 
upon the proceeds. The manner in which his work 
impressed his associates is shown in the words spoken 
after his death by Mr. Nelson of Minnesota, a sagacious 
Senator, who had unusual opportunities for appraising 
it: 



ii8 Orville H. Piatt 

For sixteen years he was a member of the Committee on 
Indian Affairs, where he rendered most valuable and efficient 
service. No one was better versed than he in all the intrica- 
cies of Indian legislation, and no one was more alive than 
he to the true welfare of the Indians — always on guard to 
protect and defend them against open and insidious inroads 
on their rights and interests, but never a block or impedi- 
ment to the opening and settlement of our vast public 
domain. His heart went out to the frontiersman, as well 
as to the Indians. He had none of those hazy and tran- 
scendent notions of so-called "Indian rights" or "Indian 
character" possessed by a school of closet reformers. He 
gauged the Indian at his true worth and at his real aptitude 
and ability, and hence he was the most practical and useful 
friend the Indian had. 

One of the first measures which came out of the 
Indian Committee after he became a member did not 
meet with his approval. It was a bill " For the relief 
and civilization of the Chippewa Indians in the State 
of Minnesota " — briefly, a proposal to sell for the Chip- 
pewas the pine timber on their land, valued anywhere 
from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000, and devote the proceeds 
to the uses of the Indians, capitalizing the timber for 
them so that they should receive a fixed income for 
fifty years, and in certain emergencies five per cent, of 
the principal. Mr. Piatt's reasons for opposing this 
plan betrayed an intimate knowledge of the Indian 
character. He declared that the very worst thing that 
could be done for the Indians was to create such a fund : 

I think the result will be that at the end of fifty years 
these Indians will not be a particle more advanced toward 
civilization than they are to-day. The truth is that the 
hardest Indians in the United States to civilize are the 
richest ones, and in proportion to the amount of their 



Protector of the Indian 119 

riches. You cannot break up the tribal relations of a rich 
tribe of Indians with one half the ease that you can among 
Indians that have no money. Riches bring a kind of 
aristocracy among them, and they maintain their manners 
and their customs and resist every possible attempt to 
civiHze them. You may take their children and send 
them to school at Carlisle, and when they go back to the 
tribe they have either to be driven out or to go and adopt 
the customs and submit themselves to the regulations of 
the tribe. 

This reference to Carlisle touched a phase of the 
Indian problem upon which he held a decided opinion. 
For many years he was convinced of the futility of 
bringing Indian youth East for education with a view 
to their return to their own people . In the few instances 
where they had the strength to adhere to their Eastern 
training, they were cast off by their tribe. More often 
they returned to the tribe, enfeebled physically and 
morally, fell back into the old ways, and became the 
most worthless Indians on the reservation. He held 
that the missionaries who had gone out and spent their 
lives among the Indians had done far more good than 
the Eastern schools or professional philanthropists, 
although as time went by he grew to value the work 
done at Carlisle by Capt. R. H. Pratt. 

The operation of the treaties with the five civiHzed 
tribes he regarded with deep disgust. They had worked 
in practice to the injury of the Indians, for whose benefit 
they were originally framed, and their flagrant abuse 
had resulted in the control of the affairs of the tribes 
by unscrupulous white men and half-breeds who 
occupied the most productive lands and profited by a 
fictitious or mongrel relationship. 'He held that, under 
these conditions, the United States was not bound to 



I20 Orville H. Piatt 

abide by the treaties which had been so scandalously- 
diverted from their beneficent purpose. He expressed 
this opinion forcibly on more than one occasion. 
During the discussion of the Indian Appropriation bill 
in April, 1896, he undertook to secure the insertion of 
an amendment, which would have greatly strengthened 
the prestige and authority of the Dawes Commission 
with the five tribes with whom they were empowered 
to negotiate. The amendment, although favorably 
reported by the Indian Committee, was opposed by a 
persistent lobby, and was finally ruled out on a point of 
order. Some of those who opposed the amendment 
referred unctuously to the spires of the Indian churches 
ascending to heaven, " showing that they are followers 
of that meek and lowly Nazarene, that Man of Galilee, 
to whom we all bow." The character of the opposition 
filled the soul of the Connecticut Senator with wrath. 
He declared that neither in Russia nor Turkey was the 
despotism of the so-called government in the Indian 
Territory equalled, and that neither in Cuba nor any- 
where else were their atrocities surpassed. The ob- 
jections to the amendment he said were made, not in 
the interest of the Indians, but in the interest of white 
men "who have not a drop of Indian blood in their 
veins, yet who dominate these tribes and these nations 
with as heavy a hand as the feudal baron ever domi- 
nated the people of his barony." He asserted that in 
the Indian Territory five hundred men, largely white, 
with scarcely a half-blood Indian among them, had 
"seized, appropriated, and hold nine tenths of the 
agricultural land to the exclusion of those who are 
entitled equally as citizens of the Territory to the use 
and benefit of that land; and the moment any 
measure is proposed looking to a remedy for that 



Protector of the Indian 121 

awful injustice, that unholy spoliation of the Indians, 
our wards, whom we are bound to protect, then 
Senators are shocked lest some rule of the Senate 
should be transgressed." Self-government in the 
Territory, he declared, was more than a failure : 

It is a shame, a disgrace, an intolerable nuisance, the 
five hundred men who have seized the land control it by 
the corruption of the Legislatures, by the corruption of 
courts, by the terrorizing of those whose lands they have 
seized. . . . If it be necessary to override treaties, if in 
the opinion of any Senator there is anything in the amend- 
ment which by any construction or by any stretch of con- 
struction can be held as not living up to the letter of the 
treaties, then I am prepared to say that no more solemn 
obligation ever rested upon the Senate of the United States 
than to disregard those treaties. When we make a treaty 
with an Indian nation, we make it not only for ourselves 
but for the Indians. We make it with our wards. We 
make it with a people whose interests we are bound to 
protect, and when the letter of the treaty is used for the 
oppression of those people by men who have thrust them- 
selves into the situation for gain and for personal advance- 
ment, it becomes our duty to see that the spirit in which the 
treaty was made is carried out. Five hundred people of 
the sixty thousand so-called Indians have appropriated the 
property which belongs to the whole number. Civiliza- 
tion is arrested, progress is arrested, the real Indian is re- 
trograding; he is going back to a state of savagery and 
barbarism, and all in order that the five hundred rob- 
bers and despoilers may be kept in their unlawful posses- 
sions. I would not hesitate to disregard a treaty if it 
were necessary to do so for that purpose. 

That these words were not spoken on impulse or 
without full consideration, is shown by the fact that 



122 Orville H. Piatt 

earlier in the session Mr. Piatt had introduced a joint 
resolution, declaring: 

That the condition of the Indian Territory as regards 
population, occupation of land, and the absence of adequate 
government for the security of life and property has so 
changed since the making of treaties with the five civilized 
tribes that the United States is no longer under either legal 
or moral obligation to guarantee or permit tribal Indian 
government in said Territory, and should at once take such 
steps as may be necessary to protect the rights and liber- 
ties of all the inhabitants of said Territory. 

In preparing his first annual message, President 
McKinley sent for Mr. Piatt and asked him to prepare 
a paragraph covering the condition of affairs in the 
Indian Territory, with special reference to the ratifica- 
tion of the agreement recently effected by the Dawes 
Commission with the Choctaws and Chickasaws. In- 
stead of complying literally with this request, Mr. 
Piatt outlined his opinion of the whole Indian problem 
in a letter to the President, dated December 2, 1897, 
in the course of which he said : 

The condition of affairs in the Indian Territory is a 
disgrace to our government and our civilization. I do 
not believe that so unjust, iniquitous, and utterly indefen- 
sible a condition of affairs exists in any civilized community 
in the world. Under the guise of Indian self-government, 
supposed to be guaranteed by the United States, we permit 
practical despotism and the perpetration of unbounded 
injustice. 

The treaties made with the Indians dating back to 1838 
or thereabouts, with modifications and perhaps sanctions 
since that date, were made upon the understood agreement 
between the Indians and the United States, that the Indians 
should be provided with a territory and a home where they 



Protector of the Indian 123 

should live apart from the whites and govern themselves 
as Indians, having a common tribal title to the land in 
which every Indian should have an equal interest with 
every other Indian. . . . The whole situation has been 
changed not by the United States, but by the action of the 
Indians themselves. 

A territory, nearly equal in extent and fertility to the 
State of Indiana, has, by operation of Indian laws and 
the action of Indian governments, been given practically 
into the possession of a few persons who have little or no 
Indian blood in their veins, but are recognized as members 
of the different tribes or nations. And the methods by 
which they have become possessed, and the Indian enact- 
ments under which they hold this vast tract or territory, 
amount almost to giving them a fee-simple title and occu- 
pation. The real Indians, whose interests should be just 
as much the care of the United States now as when the 
treaties were made, have been despoiled, their use of lands 
which have any value has been denied, and their whole 
condition made more pitiable, I think, than the condition 
of any other Indians in the United States. . . . 

To allow a few persons, recognized indeed by special 
enactment as Indian citizens, but who are either purely 
white or with only a small proportion of Indian blood, 
longer to monopolize these lands, would be an unpardon- 
able neglect of duty on the part of the United States. 
In making the treaties and conveying the lands to the 
different tribes, the United States imposed a trust upon 
the tribal governments, and those governments assumed 
the obhgations of the trust, which were that all the 
members should have equal rights in the use and occupa- 
tion of the lands. That trust has been disregarded and 
wantonly violated by the Indians, and no pettifogging with 
regard to the language of the treaties and the powers 
given to the different governments can absolve the United 
States from its obligation to see that the trust is properly 
executed. The Indians who have no lands, and can obtain 



124 Orville H. Piatt 

none, because they have been appropriated by the few so- 
called Indians, must be protected in their rights and put 
in possession of their fair share of the tribal property. 
This can only be done by allotment, either of the use and 
occupation, or of a full title to the land. 

Meanwhile the condition of the white people who have 
been not only permitted but encouraged to go into the 
Territory by the Indians, demands the attention of our 
Government. It is the Indians alone, who are responsible 
for the presence of the white people, amounting probably 
to 250,000 domiciled in the Indian Territory, as against 
less than 70,000 Indians. They are without local govern- 
ment, without the privileges of American civilization, 
without the opportunity in any way to participate in the 
government of the country where they are located; white 
American citizens occupying a country where, by law, so 
far as the local affairs are concerned, there is only a govern- 
ment of Indians, by Indians, and for Indians in existence. 
The United States Government certainly owes to these 
citizens the duty of providing for them the opportunity 
which other citizens of the United States enjoy, to have a 
voice in their own government. So that both the interests 
of the Indians and the protection and the development 
of our own white citizens imperatively demand that our 
Government should, without further delay, change the 
existing conditions in the Indian Territory. There is 
nothing in the spirit of the treaties to prevent. If it is 
supposed in the letter of the treaties the United States 
Government has surrendered its rights both to care for the 
Indians and protect its own citizens, it is sufficient answer 
to say to those who insist that nothing shall be done, "that 
the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." 

One hobby he had — the appointment of fit persons 
in the Indian service. He was especially intolerant of 
the debauching of the service during the second Cleve- 
land administration, under Secretary Hoke Smith. 



Protector of the Indian 125 

On one occasion, when the Indian Rights Associa- 
tion urged him to assist the confirmation of some 
of Smith's appointments, he replied hotly to Herbert 
Welsh: 

If the Secretary of the Interior has in any way reformed, 
I am glad to hear of it. He has been, with reference to the 
Indian service and the Territorial service in general, utterly 
shameless in the matter of his appointments, not that I 
mean he has always gotten bad men ; a man cannot do that 
always, but he has made them very largely upon political 
grounds and for political purposes, this last more with 
regard to officials in Oklahoma, perhaps, than elsewhere. I 
think it is susceptible of proof that he has said that he pro- 
posed to hold the Territory of Oklahoma by his appoint- 
ments until he brought it in as a Democratic State. I don't 
want to say harsh things about any one, but I have no 
patience with the way the Secretary of the Interior has 
administered his office wherever there has been an oppor- 
tunity to appoint an impecunious and worthless Democrat. 
If of late he has done any better than formerly, we ought 
to be thankful for it. I have not yet seen the evidence of it. 
The States in which there are Indian reservations are mostly 
represented by Republican Senators and Representatives, so 
that under what they call the " Home-rule System" not one 
of them could have the slightest influence in the matter of 
appointments. When Mr. Harrison was President, I 
believe that without exception he appointed men from the 
States and Territories where the reservations were situated, 
and by comparison he got a very much better set of officials. 
I am not sure that it is a rule we ought to follow in all 
instances. The suggestion, that these men who are now 
nominated have done well and that their appointment is 
something in the nature of a promotion, has great force. 
But as between the practice of appointing from the States 
and sending carpet-baggers there, I can have but one opin- 
ion. I have known a man, appointed and confirmed by 



126 Orville H. Piatt 

the Senate, — yes, more than one, — whose reputation was 
that the first inquiry they made on their rounds as Indian 
inspectors, was for an Indian girl to sleep with. I have 
known men who were thieves and seducers at home, con- 
firmed by the Senate, when the record was plain. I have 
been so absolutely disheartened and disgusted with the 
character of men that were sent from other States to be 
Indian agents and inspectors, that I am ready to turn to 
almost anything with the behef that it cannot be worse than 
what has been done. The appointment of army officers 
reheved the trouble somewhat so far as character is con- 
cerned, but an army officer does not make the best agent 
always, or indeed usually. 

He never hesitated to address himself, with whole- 
some frankness, to the well-intentioned people who had 
voluntarily taken upon themselves the responsibility 
for the proper settlement of the Indian question. 
When the Outlook in March, 1902, published an article 
on "The Lease of the Standing Rock Reservation," 
taking Congress and the administration severely to 
task, he wrote promptly to Dr. Lyman Abbott : 

Some one has sent me the Outlook for March 29th, with 
a marked article by Mr. Kinman, "The Lease of the Stand- 
ing Rock Reservation." I regret to say that I do not 
remember to have ever seen, within the same space, so 
much of statement and insinuation calculated to give an 
entirely erroneous impression as to the facts as in that 
article. Surely you cannot suppose that the Secretary 
of the Interior, and the Indian Commissioner, and Com- 
mittees of Congress, are either corruptly or stupidly trying 
to despoil the Indians of their rights. 

In the winter of 1900-01, a proposition was brought 
into the Senate, looking to the construction of a dam 
across the Gila River, near San Carlos, Arizona, to 



Protector of the Indian 127 

store the waters of the river for the benefit of the 
Pima Indian reservation. The Pima Indians from 
time immemorial had supported themselves largely 
by agriculture under irrigation. White settlers on the 
upper portion of the Gila River, having taken up their 
lands under government laws, had diverted the water 
so that the Indians were deprived of its use. Mr. 
Piatt believed that the Government ought, at any 
practicable cost, to supply water to the reservation 
for the benefit of the Indians, but he believed also that 
all the water needed for irrigating lands upon their 
reservation could be obtained without resorting to the 
expedient of building a dam 130 miles above the reser- 
vation, at an estimated cost of $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. 
He recognized in the proposed amendment a scheme 
to commit the Government to a system of national 
irrigation — a system to which he was not necessarily 
opposed, but which he felt should not be entered upon 
without the most careful consideration. The National 
Irrigation Association and the Geological Survey ear- 
nestly advocated the legislation, and, to supplement 
their work, the friends of the Indian were rounded up 
and induced to pelt sympathetic Senators with petitions 
and appeals. To one of these philanthropists, Mr. 
Piatt responded: 

I have an idea, and I may as well express it frankly, 
that your board, and other people throughout the United 
States who are friends of the Indians, have overestimated 
the necessity of spending a couple of million of dollars, 
more or less, to irrigate the Pima reservation. The plan 
is being pushed from two sources: One, philanthropic 
people who desire to subserve the interests of the Indians, 
and the other, the National Irrigation Association, that has 
fixed upon this plan to commit the Government to a system 



128 Orville H. Piatt 

of national irrigation, which if once entered into will cost 
hundreds, and possibly thousands, of millions of dollars. 
I myself believe that all the irrigation needed at present 
by these Indians can be provided without embarking in 
this very expensive enterprise. I think the sufferings 
of the Indians have been, very much overdrawn. We were 
told last year that they were in a starving condition, and 
that it would take at least $50,000 to support them for 
the year. We appropriated $30,000, of which only $7,000 
has been used, and I think that the use of that money has 
relieved any actual suffering. I believe that with $10,000 
expenditure, the work to be performed by the Indians, 
their lands can be irrigated, for the present at least, and I 
think that the philanthropic friends of the Indians through- 
out the United States ought to be very careftil that they 
are not made use of to try to commit the Government to a 
system of national irrigation. 

While he at no time relished the irksome work on the 
Indian Committee, he nevertheless took quiet satis- 
faction in the thought that he was rendering a valuable 
service both to the Indian and to his own Government. 
When in 1902 he secured an amendment to a bill' open- 
ing to settlement the Rosebud reservation in South 
Dakota, by which settlers, instead of obtaining free 
entry, were required to buy at the rate of $2.50 an 
acre for their lands, he wrote home to a friend in 
Meriden : 

I suppose the world would go on if I should die, but 
while I am here in the Senate there is always something 
depending on me especially. Just now it is the Indian 
Appropriation bill; next week it will probably be Cuba, 
if the House passes some bill, and so it goes. What a man 
does quietly is never known or appreciated. For in- 
stance — I put an amendment into a bill to-day for the open- 
ing of an Indian reservation which is likely to save the 



Protector of the Indian 129 

Government, first and last, if the same policy is continued 
with reference to other matters of a similar kind, at least 
$50,000,000. I feel that I have to watch these things, 
but still I am looking forward to trying to find the time 
when I can get to Connecticut; wish I could get there on 
Good-Friday. 

When he became Chairman of the Committee on 
Cuban Relations, he endeavored to escape further 
service on the Indian Committee, but the urgency of 
those interested in the integrity of Indian legislation 
prevailed upon him to remain. To one of these 
friendly advisers, F. J. Kingsbury, of Waterbury, Con- 
necticut, he wrote, on March 10, 1901: 

The Indian question, as it is called, is one of great dif- 
ficulty. If it is considered from the sympathetic side 
merely, that is one thing. If it is considered from the 
practical side, that is often an entirely different thing. 
It perplexes the wisest and best to know what is to be done 
in given instances. There is enough work on the Indian 
Committee to take the entire time of any Senator, and then 
he would be as uncertain as to the best practical thing to 
be done as he is now. I have felt that I ought to go off 
from the Indian Committee, and yet I think it is no egotism 
to say that for some years I have stood between the Indians 
and a disposition in a good many quarters to consider the 
wishes of white people rather than the interests of the 
Indians. You cannot look at an Indian reservation in this 
country without seeing a case for the Supreme Court of the 
United States. The questions arising are most perplexing 
and complicated. I really have not the time to give to 
them. I am second on the Judiciary Committee, third on 
Finance, Chairman of the Committee on Relations with Cuba, 
either one of which, to say nothing of the Indian Committee, 
involves great labor, and I feel as if I ought to give some 
attention, indeed careful consideration, to the great public 



I30 Orville H. Piatt 

questions which loom up now as never before. I do not 
know what to do about staying on the Indian Committee. 
Nothing that I can do will satisfy either side, for both the 
benevolent Indian sympathizers, and those who have no 
regard for the Indians when the white man's interest is 
involved, are extremists. Truth here, as in most all 
matters, lies in the middle. 

But with all his discriminating conscientiousness 
in legislation, it was through the personal side of his 
relations to the Indian that his service on the Committee 
had its peculiar value. For twenty years he was the 
real friend and champion of the Indians, and they re- 
garded him as they would a father. From all over the 
country the Indians seemed to know that Senator 
Piatt would befriend them, and see that justice would be 
done, and they always felt free to write him. Of this 
phase of his experience, one who had peculiarly close 
relations with Mr. Piatt during the last years of his 
life says: 

One characteristic letter, I remember, came from "Mak 
She Ka Tan No, " who made his mark, which was witnessed 
by "Wm. Myer" and "Sal WilHams." This was written 
from Shawnee, O. T., March 4, 1903, and reads: 

"Honorable O. H. Piatt, United States Senate, Washing- 
ton, D. C. Dear Sir: I have been told you know a great deal 
about Indians and the Indian business, that you are one 
of the Senate council for that purpose. I am a poor Kicka- 
poo Indian boy. A few years ago when the Government 
allotted land to the Kickapoo Indians in Oklahoma some 
of us were left out and got no land. I am a full blood In- 
dian, my father and mother were full blood Kickapoo In- 
dians, and the letter I hand you herewith, which I ask you 
to transmit to the Secretary of the Interior with such 
recommendations as you may deem proper, explains to 



Protector of the Indian 131 

you that it is in the power of the Government to yet give 
me an allotment. Trusting you will be kind enough to 
do something for me, I am 

"MakShe KaTan No." 

Senator Piatt took as much trouble and pains with 
this Indian as he would have taken with any man in Con- 
necticut ; he took it up with the Secretary of the Interior, 
and the matter covered most of the summer; the "Kicking 
Kickapoo" band was involved, and finally this Indian 
received his allotment, as well as others shown to be entitled, 
on the diminished Kickapoo reserve in Kansas. 

Even when Senator Piatt was obliged to give up his 
membership on the Committee on Indian Affairs he still 
helped to scrutinize the Appropriation bill, and was looked 
to for advice in the Senate, and appealed to by Indians 
without number or limit. 

I think one of the most affecting scenes I witnessed, in 
connection with his official life, was during the session 
towards the end of 1903, or 1904. As usual the Indians 
were in Washington to look after their interests. They 
had been going to see the Senator, and sending him mes- 
sages, and going through the regular evolutions, to all of 
which he gave patient attention. One day a delegation of 
brav^es, probably numbering fifty, possibly more, were at 
the Capitol to see him. He was much pressed for time, as 
usual, was working on an important amendment to the 
Indian bill, together with other matters, but he left the 
Senate floor, and came to his committee-room, walked over 
and sank down in a chair by the window. An interpreter 
was present, who seated himself near the Senator, and all 
the balance ranged themselves around the room, close to 
the walls, hunched up, watching the Senator intently, who 
surely was the personification of the "Big White Father." 

All he said was: "Now tell me all about it," turning to 
the interpreter, who proceeded to make explanations, 
while the Senator sat as silent as the Indians. He asked 



132 Orville H. Piatt 

some questions, pointing first to one and then to another 
of the Indians, saying, "Just what is it you want— and 
why?" He spent a couple of hours, and then rose up, 
while all those in the room did likewise, and in precisely 
the same fashion, and then he said, first directly to one 
and then to another, "That you cannot have; it is not 
right; you are not entitled to it; the Government does not 
owe it to you." To another, "I will look into it." To 
another, always pointing to the one intended, and never 
confusing any particular request or demand, "you shall 
have it," and so on. Finally, "I say to you — you shall 
have justice; I shall look after you." Then straight to 
the door he walked without a word further or gesture, 
while the entire delegation muttered the Indian grunt of 
satisfaction and approval — "Ugh! Ugh! Big Chief! Big 
White Father! " and all slowly passed out after him, single 
file. They had formed a line down which he passed much 
after the fashion of the Indians at the little CathoHc Church 
up at Wequetonsing, Michigan, when the Father passes 
out from celebrating Mass on Sunday mornings. 

Among the eulogies delivered after his death, there 
was none more fitting than that of Senator Morgan of 
Alabama, a political opponent, who had seen years of 
service with him on the Indian Committee: 

As the great and proud race of Indians are disappearing 
from their fatherland, which no Indian would ever desert 
nor be driven from it save by forces that made death the 
penalty of resistance, none of them will forget the sympathy 
of Senator Piatt in his patient, just, and humane devotion 
to the rights that remained to them after more than two 
centuries of warfare for the maintenance of their original 
independence. He provided for them in their necessitous 
condition almost as a father would provide for his family. 
His great abilities and industrious labors were always 
engaged in their service when needed, so that none were 



Protector of the Indian 133 

neglected; and the records of the Senate are a history of 
his work that carries honor to his memory on every page 
that relates to Indian affairs. 

His only possible reward was the consciousness of duty 
well and honestly performed. 

The proud and silent nod of the grateful Indian in 
approbation of the equally proud and silent assistance of 
the great Senator was the only token of friendship between 
men who were sternly just in their actions, and neither of 
them asked nor expected nor granted favors. 



CHAPTER X 

NEW STATES IN THE WEST 

Chairman of Committee on Territories— Instrumental in Admitting 
Six New States — In Close Touch with the West. 

A SYMPATHY as broad as the Continent, an under- 
standing which comprehended the needs and 
aspirations of every State and Territory helped to make 
Piatt of Connecticut in all the name implies a Senator 
of the United States. A New Englander of Puritan 
descent, he was an American citizen first of all, and the 
star that represented California on the flag was as 
significant to him as that which marked his native 
State. His connection with the Indian Committee 
brought him in close touch with the country beyond 
the Mississippi, and years of service with the Committee 
on Territories gave him an acquaintance with the Far 
West which gained him recognition as the Eastern 
Senator most conversant with its problems and sym- 
pathetic with its aims. He watched the growth of 
the Western country with satisfaction and pride. It 
carried to him no message of apprehension for the fu- 
ture of his own region. The threatened encroachments 
upon the influence of New England did not disturb him. 
"New England has no fears for the future," he said. 
"She has heard the cries of 'cotton is king', 'wheat is 
king,' 'iron is king'; and has heard them unmoved. 

134 



New States in the West 135 

ft 

She knows there is no real kingship in the United States 
but the sovereignty of ideas." ^ 

Western men learned to trust him and confide in 
him. He bore toward some of the younger of them an 
almost paternal relationship, and they went to him 
like children for encouragement and help. The affection 
with which they grew to regard him seemed, at times, 
incongruous with the practical workings of the legis- 
lative machine, yet it contributed subtly and often- 
times indispensably to its effective operation. Since 
his death no one has quite taken the peculiar place he 
occupied as a link between the East and West. 2 

' Speech advocating the admission of Washington, March 3, 1886. 

2 Western men are fond of teUing about the positive way in which 
he handled questions relating to their part of the country, dis- 
closing a shrewd and appreciative understanding of the Western 
character. 

Once when the Utah question was up before the Territories 
Committee he asked a man who appeared in behalf of the Mormon 
side: "Do you know Abbott R. Hejrwood of Ogden? Is he a 
truthful man?" Hejrwood was Chairman of the Liberal party in 
Utah and Mr. Piatt was palpably toying with a letter which from 
the heading evidently came from him. The answer was: "Yes, I 
know Mr. Abbott R. Heywood and I think that he is a truthful 
man." The Senator chuckled drily, opened the letter, and said: 
"You have made a lucky reply. I guess you are a truthful man 
too. Abbott Heywood says that you are all right and he takes 
your view of this particular part of the case. " Later when state- 
hood was on the point of gaining or losing and his decision was 
likely to settle the question, he asked for Abbott R. Heywood's 
opinion and got it. When overzealous friends of statehood had 
made rash assertions in their eagerness to gain his support he sent 
for the man whom he had once before tested on Heywood's letter 
and said : " I '11 take your word and no one else's among the Mormons 
on this question. Have these people, any of them, been living with 
their plural wives since the manifesto?" "Yes, Senator," was 
the reply, "there has been a case now and then, but the Gentiles 
have not chosen to prosecute it because they believe the Church 
will discountenance the practice and if the pulpit will range itself 
v«-ith the law it cannot go on. " "Well, " was Mr. Piatt's comment. 



136 Orville H. Piatt 

It was partly a matter of chance that he had so much 
to do with the admission of new States to the Union, 
but while he was Chairman of the Committee on Terri- 
tories it happened that six stars were added to the flag 
and that it fell to him to secure the enactment of the 
bills creating six commonwealths, — a record which 
stands to the credit of no other public man since the 
beginning of the Government. It is true that Idaho, 
Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, 
and Wyoming would sooner or later have been admitted 
to the sisterhood of States, for the times were ripening 
for the change, but the date and manner of their 
admission might have been far different had it not been 
for the tact and integrity of the Senator who had their 
fortunes in charge, and for the confidence which he 
inspired. A narrow-minded partisan in his position 
might have been a serious obstacle in the way. But 
Piatt was broad enough to grasp the true significance of 
the development of the West. He believed with 
Seward that Territories should be transformed into 
States just as soon as local circumstances justified the 
change. He held to the conviction that the sooner a 
Territory emerges from its provincial condition the 
better, and the sooner the people are admitted to 
participate in the responsibilities of government, the 
stronger and more vigorous the State those people 
form will be; that the longer the process of pupilage 
the greater will be the effect of federal patronage and 
federal influence upon them. To his mind. there were 
four conditions of admission. First, there must be 
sufficient territory; second, that territory must have 

"they say that you are New England folks out in Utah. If you 
are and will live up to New England traditions you will soon get 
into line for the country and you will stand by it to the death. " 



New States in the West 137 

the requisite population; third, it must have resources 
which promise development; fourth, it must have a 
people whose character is a guarantee of a republican 
form of government. Throughout his career in the 
Senate, he favored the admission of new States when- 
ever these conditions were fulfilled. In advocating the 
admission of the State of Washington in 1886, he said : 

Whatever the future may develop with regard to the 
acquisition of territory — whatever we may think with 
regard to Alaska, which is territory acquired outside of 
what I may call our integral territory, it seems to me that 
with reference to the territory which we have, which is now 
circumscribed by the lines which bound upon the north 
what is called "The United States," there can be no 
question but that the same rule of admission is to be 
applied now with regard to those territories as has been 
applied in the past. The people of those Territories are 
not full American citizens, are not fully entitled to the 
rights of other citizens of the United States, do not fully 
illustrate the principles of self-government, until they are 
admitted to become participants in the general union of 
States. 

It has been said that in this admission of new Western 
States he saw no reason to fear for the influence of New 
England. He recognized that, as the country grew in 
wealth and population, New England of necessity would 
count for less and less in a material way and that her 
influence must depend upon the character of her people 
and her representatives. But he took an even broader 
view than that. He saw with a prophet's eye that her 
real supremacy must be maintained through the right 
development of the country to the West, and he pro- 
tested earnestly against the theory advanced by some 
that her true policy was to prevent if possible any 



138 Orville H. Piatt 

addition to the existing number of States lest she should 
be shorn of a portion of the strength she then possessed. 
Pleading for Washington in 1886, and speaking for 
New England, he said her Senators were haunted by 
no such fear: 

The policy of New England with respect to national 
growth has never been one of exclusion or repression ; on 
the contrary, it has been the policy of the admission of new 
Statesand the consequent enhancement of national strength. 
Examine the record, and you will find that opposition to 
the admission of States has not come from New England 
either in the Senate or House. We have learned, and we 
know full well, that we cannot maintain our place and 
influence in the national household by numerical power. 
It takes but a few years in the great march of national 
progress to build up new communities that in population 
and wealth and numerical representation can more than 
compete with New England. No, sir; we understand if, 
as we hope and trust, New England is to maintain in the 
future as she has in the past a conspicuous, if not potential, 
place in the councils of the nation she must base her claim 
to such notice on something besides numbers or wealth. 

We have learned, indeed we have always realized, that 
there are invisible forces which can make a small State 
great; that the true sources of power are in the brains and 
hearts of a people, be they many or few. So long as New 
England can maintain for her citizens a high standard of 
intelHgence, of virtue, and national love, I have no mis- 
givings as to the position she will occupy in the Republic. 
If her Senators can truly and worthily represent a people 
with such characteristics, they need never fear that their 
voice will be unheeded. Once New England cast exactly 
one third of the votes in this branch of the national legisla- 
ture. Now she casts less than one sixth of them, and yet 
she does not feel that she has been shorn of her strength 
or that her influence has departed or waned. . . . 



New States in the West 139 

Why should New England be thought to fear or regret 
the admission of new States? Cast your eye along the 
parallels of latitude which stretch from the Atlantic coast 
to the Pacific shore. Study the characteristics of that 
marvellous civiHzation which has redeemed the land and 
subjugated the forces of nature along those parallels. 
Take note of the people who along those lengthened lines 
have builded cities, developed agriculture, penetrated the 
deep recesses of the earth, created a highway, yes, high- 
ways for the nation, estabHshed the institutions of educa- 
tion and religion, elevated and glorified mankind. Who 
are they ? Are they not bone of our bone and flesh of our 
flesh? The blood of New England courses along every 
artery of national life. Put your finger on the pulse of 
enterprise as it beats in Walla Walla, or Seattle, or Tacoma, 
or Port Townsend, and you will feel the heart-throb of New 
England. Who are these men who to-day are asking the 
Senate permission to enjoy the full privileges of American 
citizenship in the new State of Washington? True, they 
have gathered from many States ; they have come even from 
foreign lands, from lands beyond the sea; a new people 
indeed, but how many of them can trace back their vigor 
and force to the ancestral cottage which stood on the New 
England hillside, their patriotism to the village green, and 
their virtue to the New England church ? The voice which 
I bring to them to-day from their ancestral States is, " Come 
in, and welcome." 

Washington was not admitted as a State during the 
Forty-ninth Congress. The bill for its admission passed 
the Senate, providing for the incorporation of the Pan- 
handle of Idaho into the new State, but the measure did 
not pass the House. When the proposal came again in 
the Fiftieth Congress, in 1888, Mr. Piatt favored the 
admission of a State containing the original boundaries 
of Washington and leaving Idaho undisturbed, a 



I40 Orville H. Piatt 

provision which finally prevailed, although not favored 
by the majority of the Territories Committee. In the 
Fiftieth Congress, the Committee on Territories reported 
favorably four bills looking to the admission of new 
States into the Union — Washington, Montana, and the 
two Dakotas. It had been proposed to admit the 
northern half of the Territory of Dakota as a State under 
the name of "Lincoln." The people of the Territory 
objected, and several Democratic Senators, among them 
Mr. Butler of South Carolina, took them to task for 
what was termed a lack of reverence for the name 
of the great emancipator. Mr. Piatt confessed his 
sympathy with the people of the Territory in this. 

"The condition is such," he said, "that the name of 
Dakota cannot be taken away from either portion of 
the Territory without injustice, and without doing 
violence to the wishes and feelings of the Territory." 

As for the charge of irreverence brought by Mr. 
Butler, he said : 

Suppose that some one should propose to change the 
name of the Senator and call him by the name of the most 
illustrious of all Presidents, the father of his country, 
and that his name henceforth, instead of being Matthew 
C. Butler should be Matthew C. Washington, and that he 
should object and say, "My name is Butler; I do not desire 
to change it." Would he be held lacking in respect and 
admiration for the great name of Washington? Not at 
all. And no more are the soldiers of North Dakota, who 
followed the flag and carried the musket, who, under the 
lead of the great Lincoln, preserved the Government when 
it was assailed — no more are they to be charged with being 
wanting in respect to the name of Lincoln. I congratulate 
the Senator from South Carolina, and I congratulate the 
country on his new-bom zeal and admiration for the memory 
of Lincoln. 



New States in the West 141 

The Democrats in the House, having a majority there, 
and enjoying the support of a Democratic adminis- 
tration, not unnaturally undertook to prevent the 
admission of four Republican States on the eve of an 
election for President, and made an issue by proposing 
the admission of Dakota as one State while New Mexico 
was to be brought in as a Democratic balance. A 
caucus of the Democrats of the House adopted this 
resolution : 

Resolved, That it is the sense of the caucus that an 
enabling act for the Territories of Dakota, Montana, Wash- 
ington, and New Mexico should be passed at this session, 
providing for constitutional conventions in each Territory, 
and the submission of those constitutions for ratifica- 
tion at an election in November, 1888, substantially as 
provided for in the bill reported by the Committee on 
Territories at this session. 

Mr. Piatt contended that the people of the southern 
part of Dakota had a right to participate in the next 
election for President; that they ought to have been 
admitted long ago. He declared that Congress had 
been derelict in its duty, that it had temporized and 
postponed the creation of the State until it had become 
400,000 strong, a population greater than that of Rhode 
Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Florida, 
Oregon, Nebraska, Nevada, or Colorado, and that the 
fact that another presidential election was approaching 
was no reason why they should now be denied admission 
into the Union as quickly as it could be done. He 
quoted the treaty with France ceding the Territory of 
Louisiana of which Dakota was a part, and the North- 
west Ordinance of 1787, as extended in 1834, to show 
that the people of the Territory had morally a right to 



142 Orville H. Piatt 

be admitted to the Union. At the same time he con- 
tended that the Territory was too large to be admitted 
as one State. It was larger by 27,000 square miles 
than England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — practi- 
cally as large as New York, Pennsylvania, New Jer- 
sey, Maryland, and Virginia, and capable of supporting 
as large a population: 

Even if the sentiment of the people were not adverse to it 
and the people had a dream of empire to grow out of the 
admission of such a great State, yet Congress, having refer- 
ence to the physical equality of all the States, ought not 
to think of admitting one State into the Union so capable of 
sustaining a dense population. 

The idea of proper self-government repelled the 
notion that such a State would not be too large. It was 
impossible for the common people to take part in the 
concerns of a State of that size. The expense of travel 
to conventions and to the Legislature would practically 
shut them out from a participation in the privileges of 
government, relegating the conduct of affairs to the 
rich or unscrupulous. It would amount also to a 
practical denial of the administration of justice in the 
courts. Poor people must have their courts near at 
hand: 

Good statesmanship will avoid the creation of imperial 
States. I heard it said during the discussion last year that 
if we would divide Dakota and divide other Territories the 
Senate would become a mob. At most it could not have 
more than one hundred members if we admitted all the 
Territories, dividing Dakota, and, I think, sphtting up 
Texas into five States besides ; but it is better that the 
Senate should be so enlarged, that it should represent the 
popular will and feel the popular pulse, than that a State 
should be admitted which would have an abnormally large 



New States in the West 143 

representation in the House of Representatives. It is 
to the danger, it is to the disadvantage of smaller States 
and medium-sized States that any State should have an 
abnormally large representation in the House of Represen- 
tatives. 

The act enabling the people of the two Dakotas, 
Montana, and Washington, to form constitutions and 
State governments, was passed in the next session, and 
was approved by President Cleveland on February 
22, 1889. 

In the first session of the Fifty-first Congress in 1890, 
Mr. Piatt as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, 
secured the enactment of bills admitting to statehood 
Idaho and Wyoming. There was a RepubHcan majority 
in both Senate and House, and the opposition to these 
bills was perfunctory, though, in the case of Wyoming, 
there was a question as to the advisability of admitting 
to full participation in the privileges of statehood 
a community where women would be permitted to 
vote under the constitution. To this Mr. Piatt re- 
sponded that while he had never been an advocate of 
woman suffrage, he would not keep a Territory out of 
the Union because its constitution allowed women to 
vote, nor would he force upon a Territory any restriction 
or qualification as to what the vote should be in that 
respect. Both the Idaho and Wyoming bills were 
passed and the two new States were admitted, one on 
July 3, 1890, the other on July nth. 

It was six years before the admission of another 
State. Utah was admitted in 1896, and Oklahoma in 
1907. In the first session of the Fifty-second Congress, 
in 1892, the Committee on Territories reported a bill for 
the admission of New Mexico. Mr. Piatt did not join 
in the report, and questioned whether, in view of 



144 Orville H. Piatt 

statistics and facts, New Mexico was entitled to ad- 
mission. When the attempt was made ten years later 
to admit Arizona and New Mexico, with Oklahoma and 
the Indian Territory, Mr. Piatt, although not then a 
member of the Committee, strongly opposed the ad- 
mission of the four new States. He was ready to 
admit Oklahoma and the Indian Territory as one State, 
and that finally came about, but his influence, which 
was very powerful, was exerted against any other con- 
clusion than this. To his friend, L. F. Parker of 
St. Louis, who favored giving the Indian Territory a 
delegate in Congress, he wrote, on March 25, 1903 : 

There is much in what you say in your letter of Novem- 
ber 20th, but I do not feel like doing anything which may 
seem to have the apparent effect of looking toward state- 
hood for the Indian Territory alone. I have pretty decided 
notions on that subject. Oklahoma and the Indian 
Territory have, of course, sufficient population for statehood, 
when compared with many States we have admitted, but I 
believe it is best for the country and best for both Okla- 
homa and the Indian Territory, that when they do come in, 
they shall come as one State. States are made altogether 
too easily and thoughtlessly now. I do not know that the 
allowance of a delegate would affect the matter, but Alaska 
is asking for one, as well as the Indian Territory — both are 
in somewhat unorganized condition, and between us, I do 
not think there is any necessity for one from either. I do 
not mean by this to say that I would oppose it, but am 
merely expressing my own feeling about it. 

During all his association with the Committee on 
Territories and the Committee on Indian Affairs, Mr. 
Piatt scrupulously refrained from interfering in the 
purely local questions involved, save where it was 
necessary in the enactment of legislation. Above all 



New States in the West 145 

he kept himself aloof from the scrambles for office. 
His reply in 1889 to one who wrote him in behalf 
of an applicant for the governorship of New Mexico is 
typical of his attitude in all such things : 

I have felt that it would be a mistake for me to re- 
commend particular persons for appointment in Territories 
— in any of them. By reason of my position as Chairman 
of the Senate Committee on Territories, and the very severe 
struggle to get the four Territories admitted, viz. ; Washing- 
ton, Montana, and the two Dakotas, I have come to occupy 
a position where my endorsement is very much sought by 
applicants for positions in those Territories. I am in no way 
qualified to recommend the persons to fill the ofhces, and 
if I should recommend one, I would displease the others. 
So I have thought that the best interests of the Territories 
required that I should not make recommendations. I 
am very much interested in having President Harrison 
adopt the policy of immediate change of officers and make 
appointments from the Territories and not from the out- 
side. I have told him that I have no men to push, but 
that I do believe that the interests of the Republican party 
require immediate action. And I have even declined to 
express an opinion when asked by him, as to the compara- 
tive merits of candidates — not in New Mexico, but in one 
of the other Territories. I think I can do more for the 
Territories in that position than to try to get this or that 
man appointed, and there is no middle ground. I must 
either make recommendations in all the Territories or in 
none. I think you will coincide with me in saying this is the 
wisest thing to do. But if not, I have already taken this 
position with the President, and do not see how I can 
change. 

His service with the Committee on Temtories lasted 
for twelve years, — from 1883 to 1895. During the first 
four years Benjamin Harrison was Chairman of the 



146 Orville H. Piatt 

Committee and Piatt sat next to him at the table; 
during the six years from 1887 to 1893, Piatt was 
Chairman of the Committee; from 1893 to 1895, the 
Democrats were in control. The work which he did 
during this period gave him great satisfaction, and on 
the rare occasions when he enumerated his achieve- 
ments in legislation he always laid stress upon the new 
States he had a hand in creating; but perhaps the 
greatest value of his service was in the experience it 
gave him with the practical problems of territorial 
government which came so well in play when the time 
arrived to consider the graver questions growing out 
of the organization of strange territory through the 
war with Spain. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE FOREIGN-BORN AMERICAN 

Restriction of Immigration — Advocate of Reasonable Legislation — 
His Opinion of the Adopted Citizen. 

THE preservation of the quality of American citizen- 
ship was a thing which all his life appealed power- 
fully to this typical American of English ancestry. At 
the same time, he was broad enough in his humanity to 
understand the aspirations of the alien seeking to better 
his condition by migrating to our shores, and practical 
enough to recognize the economic value of the imple- 
ment thus thrust into our hands. He believed in 
immigration and was for welcoming every worthy 
stranger who wandered this way for a home. It is 
true that in his early manhood he had been affiliated 
with the American or " Know-Nothing " party and had 
served as Chairman of its State Committee, but this was 
not because he subscribed to the party's bigoted anti- 
foreign creed. It was because he saw in its organization 
the most effective agency then at hand to advance the 
Anti-Slavery cause. As time went by and he saw 
the deserted homesteads in the Litchfield hills gradu- 
ally renewing their life through the influx of thrifty 
Swedes, he grew to appreciate the value of the healthy 
blood infused into the veins of a thinning countryside, 
and he appreciated also the importance of maintaining 
the wholesomeness of the inflowing stream. For the 

147 



148 Orville H. Piatt 

French-Canadians who had come to the mill towns of the 
Connecticut valley in great numbers, he had a high 
regard. He seized more than one occasion in the 
Senate to record his commendation of their sterling 
qualities : 

I have known these people for forty years in the city 
where I reside [he said in the course of the debate on the 
Wilson-Gorman Tariff bill in 1894], and I am proud to 
number among them very many valued acquaintances, 
social acquaintances, with whom I am as glad to associate 
as with any of the citizens of my town. They are, as a rule, 
intelligent, industrious, thrifty, and conservative; they make 
good citizens; they accumulate property, they are me- 
chanics, agriculturists, and merchants, and among them 
are many scholars, authors, and men representing the 
different professions; they assimilate with our native 
population; their children intermarry with ours; they are 
quiet and unostentatious; they make no trouble, and after 
a period of residence here they can scarcely be distinguished 
from our own native population. 

Their children attend our schools, take prizes in competi- 
tion with the children of the old inhabitants of Connecticut, 
and in no respect can they be taunted with being an inferior 
or undesirable people. Usually they accumulate property, 
and they do not return to Canada carrying away the money 
which they have earned here. They do not supplant our 
American workman by accepting lower wages. They 
work for the same wages that the native workman receives ; 
they work beside him at the same bench or on the same 
machine. There is no prejudice against them. They are 
a church-going and a religious people, moral as well as 
industrious. They do not appear in our police courts, 
but they do take part, as they should, in our town meetings. 

But he was not blind to the fact that all immigrants 
were not of the character of the Swedes and French- 



The Foreign-Born American 149 

Canadians who settled in his own State, and throughout 
his service in the Senate he invariably supported meas- 
ures to exclude the undesirable. 

In the second session of the Forty-eighth Congress in 
1884, a law was enacted to prohibit the importation 
and migration of foreigners and aliens under contract 
or agreement to perform labor in the United States, 
its Territories, and the District of Columbia. Mr. Piatt 
not only voted for it but spoke for it: 

It is a bill [he said] which proposes to declare, as I 
understand, two things, and therefore I am in favor of it: 
First, that the policy of this Government is to protect its 
laboring men, its workers, to protect them to the extent 
that they shall be elevated rather than degraded, that they 
shall be educated rather than made ignorant, that they 
shall be honored rather than despised; and second, I 
understand the principle of this bill to be that labor in this 
country belongs of right to the laborers who are now resi- 
dent here, and to such other laborers as shall voluntarily 
come here to join those resident here in the performance 
of that labor, and I have no hesitation in saying that a prac- 
tice which contradicts and violates these principles is a 
crime against the RepubHc, a crime against its social order, 
and a crime against its system of government. 

It is impossible tO bring foreign laborers here under 
contract without assailing all these principles which I have 
been enunciating. I am opposed to importing laborers as 
we import horses and cattle. I am opposed to what may 
be called involuntary immigration into this country. I 
am not opposed to voluntary immigration. I regard 
voluntary immigration as one of the chief sources of our 
strength, as a factor which has developed and is further 
to develop the grandest civiHzation that this continent or 
the world has ever known, and to make our own the most 
prosperous, the most powerful, and the most beneficent of 



ISO Orville H. Piatt 

all the nations of the earth. I believe that the admixture 
with our native races of those who come here imbued with 
the principles of this Government, seeking to better their 
condition, honestly desiring to work in this land of freedom, 
tends to build us up as a people and to ennoble all our 
citizens. 

I have never been in favor of involuntary immigration. 
I voted against the Chinese bill, not because I was in favor 
of Chinamen being brought here under contract for labor, 
but simply because I thought that there were in that bill 
sections and clauses which prohibited voluntary immigra- 
tion into this country, which shut out the man who desired 
of his own accord, of his own free will, to come here and 
become a part of us; because men were shut out from this 
country by that bill, as I understood it, simply on account 
of their being laborers who wanted to labor in this country. 
I will go as far as any other man to prohibit bringing 
contract labor here, whether it be Chinese, or Italian, or 
Hungarian, or English, or French, or Irish. 

It is that principle against which I contend, and in so 
doing I recognize and uphold the right of any human being 
on this globe who himself, of his own motive, of his own 
desire, his own free will, wishes to come here and become 
part of us, and honestly partake of the benefits of labor in 
this country, to come without hindrance or restriction. 
My doctrine is that no importation of laborers to lower the 
rate of American wages should be permitted, and no volun- 
tary immigration of honest laborers should be prevented. 

He supported the bill which became a law on March 
3, 1 89 1, amending and systematizing the immigra- 
tion laws, and he voted for the bill which was vetoed 
by President Cleveland on March 2, 1897, establishing 
an educational test. Beyond those regulations he did 
not see how it was possible to restrict immigration with- 
out excluding people who ought not to be excluded. 
During the consideration of the Immigration bill which 




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The Foreign-Born American 151 

became a law on March 4, 1903, he was instrumental 
in securing an amendment, the absence of which might 
have proved embarrassing to the enforcement of the 
law, when he caused the word "immigrant" to be 
stricken out after the word "alien." Had the original 
expression been retained, it would have been possible 
for any alien coming to the United States to escape the 
provisions of the law by declaring his intention to return 
to his own country. 

His creed with regard to im^migration he expounded 
in the course of the speech which he made during the 
debate on the Chinese Exclusion bill, September 7, 1888 : 

I hold that a citizen of any country on the face of this 
earth has a right to leave that country and to transfer his 
allegiance to another country with the consent of the 
Government to which he endeavors to transfer his allegiance. 
That right, I think, is too sacred in American history to be 
denied or impeached or in any way invaded. 

I hold just as firmly to our right not to receive a man 
who may thus expatriate himself and desire to come to 
this country as I do to his right to come with our consent, 
I hold that we have a right to so regulate, restrain, restrict, 
or prohibit immigration into this country, as that our own 
country and our own people shall not suffer by that immi- 
gration, as that the character of our own people shall not 
be in any sense degraded or suffer by such immigration. I 
hold that we ought to receive any person who thus desires 
to leave a foreign country and come to our shores and who 
can comply with certain conditions which are necessary 
to be complied with in order that our civilization, our labor, 
and the character of our people shall be in no sense lessened, 
interfered with, or degraded. 

If, then, a man coming from another country is honest, 
is reputable, is able to take care of himself, is healthy, is 
the head of a family, is of capacity to understand our 



152 Orville H. Piatt 

system of government, and is sincerely desirous of casting 
in his lot with us and ultimately becoming a citizen of this 
Government, I hold we have no right to exclude him. But 
if on the other hand that person belongs to the criminal, 
or to the pauper, or the diseased or vicious class, we ought 
to exclude him. We have no room here for that class of 
immigrants. We have no room for criminals, paupers, 
diseased, vicious people in all our wide domain. We ought 
also to exclude people who have no sympathy with us 
or with our form of government or with our institutions. 

The very clause in our statute of naturalization is a guide 
to us in this respect. Before an alien can become a natural- 
ized citizen he must make it appear to the satisfaction of 
the court admitting him to citizenship that during his 
residence in the United States "he has behaved as a man 
of good moral character, is attached to the principles of 
the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to 
the good order and happiness of the same." I would not 
admit to these shores, if I could apply the test, a single 
individual who had not capacity enough to understand 
something of our system of government, and to have an as- 
piration for the liberty and independence and the dignity 
which a man may acquire and achieve under our system of 
government. No anarchists, no communists, no persons, 
from wherever they may come, who do not come here 
imbued with the principles first laid down, in the history 
of the world, in that glorious Declaration of Independence, 
should be permitted to come, if I could apply the individual 
test which would keep them away. 



CHAPTER XII 

FAIR PLAY TOWARDS CHINA 

Chinese Exclusion — Opposes Act of 1882 — Unsuccessful Attempt 

to Amend Geary Act — Legislation of 1888 — Prevents 

Drastic Legislation in 1902 and 1904. 

DENNIS KEARNY, the sand lots agitator of San 
Francisco, was in the midst of his crusade against 
the Chinese, at the time Mr. Piatt entered the Senate. 
The anti-Chinese cry in California had been growing in 
volume for a long time. In 1876, it had reached such 
proportions that both political parties inserted in their 
platforms planks regarding it ; the Democrats demand- 
ing legislation to prevent further Mongolian immigra- 
tion, the Republicans calling upon Congress to investi- 
gate the effects of the immigration and importation of 
Mongolians upon the moral and material interests of 
the country. In 1878, Congress had passed an act 
' ' to restrict the immigration of Chinese into the United 
States," which President Hayes had vetoed, on the 
ground that the legislation was in violation of the 
existing treaty negotiated in 1868 by Mr. Seward and 
Mr. Burlingame. The House declined to pass the bill 
over the veto. President Hayes thereupon proceeded 
to negotiate two treaties with China — one relating to 
commercial intercourse, the other relieving the United 
States from the provisions of the Burlingame treaty and 
permitting the exclusion of Chinese laborers. This 
treaty, signed in 1880, was ratified July 19, 1881, and at 

153 



154 Orville H. Piatt 

the next session of Congress a bill was introduced by 
Senator Miller of California, the avowed object of which 
was "to enforce treaty stipulations relating to the 
Chinese." The bill forbade the coming of Chinese 
into the United States for a period of twenty years, and 
was drastic in its provisions. Mr. Piatt could not 
bring himself to vote for it. He believed it violated the 
spirit of the treaty as well as the principles of natural 
rights and justice. On March 8, 1882, he delivered a 
speech in opposition to the measure, which was em- 
phatic and comprehensive. "To prevent possible 
damage or alleviate a real misfortune," he said, "I 
cannot consent to the infraction even of the spirit of a 
treaty, while professing to be bound by it." He re- 
minded the Senate that a treaty was "a contract be- 
tween nations" and should be kept like every other 
contract, in the spirit in which it was made: 

We made this contract which we call a treaty with the 
Chinese Government, and we must keep it. We must keep it 
or stand forever disgraced in the eyes of the world. There 
is no way in which an individual can so soon and so thor- 
oughly forfeit the respect of the community in which he 
lives as to be sharp in making a contract and sharp in 
taking an unfair advantage under the contract which the 
other contracting party never expected that he would 
take. There is no way in which a nation can so surely 
forfeit the respect of all other nations as to make that con- 
tract called a treaty in shrewdness, and then as shrewdly 
take advantage of the technical terms of that treaty to 
accomplish what the other contracting party never intended 
should be accomplished. 

But aside from the fact that the bill was in violation 
of the treaty, Mr. Piatt opposed it because : 

The true intent and meaning of it is to declare that 



Fair Play Towards China 155 

henceforth, excepting only the Chinese now here, and the 
colored people now here, no man shall work in the United 
States except he be a white man. 

He could not give his adherence to such a principle : 

In the right to work honestly, the Chinaman is your 
equal and my equal and the equal of every living man, and 
I will never consent to the passage of any bill which con- 
travenes that principle. Do not misunderstand me. I 
do not say the Chinaman is the equal of the Anglo-Saxon 
socially or intellectually. What I do say is that, other 
conditions being equal, he has the same right to come to 
this country and work that any white foreigner has. 

Mr. President, it will not do to put this legislation on 
that ground. It will not do to say that a white man who 
has all the characteristics and habits of a Chinaman and 
who will work as cheap as a Chinaman may come and labor 
here and a Chinaman may not, because, forsooth, he is a 
Mongolian. It will not do to invite white men to come 
and labor, no matter how cheap they may labor, and forbid 
a Chinaman to come and labor at the same wages. You 
must put this legislation on some other ground than the 
ground of race or color. 

Having given the reasons for his opposition to the 
bill, Mr. Piatt went on to suggest certain conditions 
under which he could vote for legislation on the subject: 

I would vote for a bill which did not improperly regulate 
or limit, or unreasonably suspend the immigration of 
Chinese laborers. I would vote for a bill which should 
prevent them coming to this country in such numbers as to 
endanger our political and social institutions. I would 
vote for a bill which would prevent their coming here as 
laborers in such numbers as to ruin labor. I would vote 
for a bill which should prevent their coming here, if they 



156 Orville H. Piatt 

degrade labor or make it dishonorable. But I cannot 
vote for a bill which has for its only object, for its only- 
aim and result, the extirpation and the exclusion of the 
Chinaman from this country. ... I am willing, and I put 
on record my willingness, to vote for any law we may 
properly pass, any law we can pass without violation of 
treaty obHgations, to the end that the labor market of this 
country shall not be over-supplied by immigration from 
any quarter; that there shall be no undue and ruinous 
competition in labor; that honest labor shall not be dis- 
honored or degraded anywhere ; that the standard of labor 
shall be fairly remunerative everywhere ; that the man who 
is willing to do honest work with hand or brain, or both, 
shall receive wages enough to enable him to live respectably, 
to educate his children, and respect himself. 

But the tide of sentiment was too strong. The 
Senate voted down an amendment reducing the period 
of exclusion from twenty years to ten, and on March 
9, 1882, passed the bill in all its criminal enormity, by 
a vote of 29 to 15. Mr. Piatt had a general pair with 
Mr. Johnston of Virginia, and so could not be recorded, 
but in announcing his pair, he said : " I regret very much 
that I am not permitted, by reason of the pair, to vote 
against the bill." He had respectable company in the 
minority: Aldrich, Allison, David Davis, Dawes, 
Edmunds, Frye, Hoar, Ingalls, and Morrill, among 
others. 

The bill passed the House a little later, and President 
Arthur vetoed it, in his message of April 4th, on the 
ground that both good faith and good policy forbade 
the suspension of Chinese immigration for so long a 
period as twenty years. The Senate refused to pass the 
bill over the veto. A few weeks later, a bill was passed 
providing for suspension for ten years, instead of twenty. 



Fair Play Towards China 157 

and making other modifications. Mr. Piatt was one 
of fifteen Senators to vote against this bill, but it was 
signed by the President on May 6, 1882. 

For six years there was comparative quiet in Wash- 
ington, so far as anti-Chinese legislation was concerned, 
although the feeling in the West became more and more 
intense. In the Cleveland administration a treaty was 
negotiated with China, under which the Chinese Govern- 
ment was to prohibit the emigration of laborers, and 
the United States was to protect from violence those 
already in this country. While this treaty was still 
pending, one of the most disgraceful episodes of Ameri- 
can politics was written into the records of Congress. 
Mr. Cleveland had been renominated and the Presiden- 
tial campaign was on. William L. Scott of Pennsyl- 
vania, a leading member of the House, was also a 
leading member of the Executive Committee of the 
Democratic National Committee. He was regarded as 
President Cleveland's spokesman in Congress. On Mon- 
day, September 3, 1888, without previous notice, an 
extraordinary bill was brought into the House by Mr. 
Scott, the President's friend, amending the Act of 1882, 
by striking out all permission for a Chinese to return to 
this country for any purpose, after having once left it, 
and declaring all return certificates void — in fact, barring 
the United States to any Chinese workman once out- 
side its boundaries. The bill, which was thought to 
have been prepared at the White House, was rushed 
through the House that Monday morning within half 
an hour of its introduction. It was a spectacular 
political trick, so timed that neither party in Congress 
could afford to oppose it in the face of a Presidential 
election. Mr. Piatt voted for the bill under protest, 
and voiced his protest in the Senate: 



158 Orville H. Piatt 

If a vote is now pressed upon this bill I shall vote for it, 
and I desire to state the reasons, and I desire also to state 
some reasons why I shall do it under protest, for I do not 
intend that any action of mine shall be misunderstood or 
misrepresented. 

I do not like the way this bill has come before Congress, 
and I want to say so as emphatically as I know how. In 
May last the Senate of the United States advised and con- 
sented to a treaty which had been negotiated with China 
and communicated to the Senate by the President. We 
were told by those representing the Pacific Coast, and we 
have heard it over and over again, that the treaty as it 
came to the Senate was not satisfactory and would not ac- 
complish the object in view, namely, the exclusion of 
Chinese laborers from this country. Being told that, the 
Senate amended the treaty in a way which was proposed by 
the representatives of the Pacific Coast and in a manner 
which they told us would be entirely satisfactory and would 
have the effect of preventing Chinese laborers from coming 
to this country in competition with our home labor. The 
treaty was so amended and passed the Senate. Follow- 
ing that treaty the Senate passed a bill on the 8th of 
August, 1888, to carry into effect the provisions of that 
treaty when ratifications should be exchanged — a bill which 
I think received the unanimous support of the Senate, a bill 
which I approved and which I still approve. . . . The 
treaty has been submitted to the Chinese authorities for 
the exchange of ratifications. The bill, after having passed 
the Senate, went to the House of Representatives, was con- 
curred in by the House, and on the first day of September, 
1888, was taken to the President of the United States for 
his approval, and remains before him at the present time. 
This was last Saturday. With that bill, which, if the treaty 
is to be ratified by the Chinese Government, goes as far 
as any human being in the United States has asked Congress 
to go in the exclusion of Chinese laborers — with that bill 
passed by both Houses, now in the hands of the President 



Fair Play Towards China 159 

of the United States for approval or rejection, there comes 
here another act, based upon the assumption that this 
treaty is not to be ratified. As I say, the bill passed by 
both Houses of Congress was delivered to the President 
of the United States last Saturday, the first day of Septem- 
ber. On last Monday, the third day of September, there 
came to us from the House of Representatives the bill now 
under consideration. 

If, as every Senator here thinks, if, as the whole country 
believes, the bill under consideration emanated from the 
Executive Department, and was started in hot haste im- 
mediately after the laying before the President of the United 
States of a bill passed by Congress upon the subject, it 
seems to me to be an Executive interference with the legis- 
lative branch of the Government, and I am bound in my 
character as a Senator to make that remark. . . . 

I can not say that this bill is written upon the paper of 
the Executive Department. I know it is generally be- 
lieved in both Houses of this Congress that it is. I can 
not say that the most potential man in the Democratic 
National Committee in the management of this campaign 
came from the White House to the Capitol with this bill; 
but it is generally believed in this chamber and throughout 
the Union. If there has been no official notice or unofficial 
intimation that this treaty has been rejected or is to be 
rejected by the Chinese Government, why this hot haste to 
override the act now lying before the Executive for his 
approval, and to pass this bill, which under such circum- 
stances would be a direct insult to a nation with whom at 
least we are desirous of continuing friendly commercial 
relations? Is this a vote-catching performance? Has it 
come to this that public office is to be prostituted for 
Democratic electioneering purposes? And if not, what 
other reason is there for thrusting in this untimely way 
this bill upon the attention of Congress? . . . 

This bill being here, being bound as a Senator, in spite 
of all the circumstances which point to other conclusions, 



i6o Orville H. Piatt 

to assume that the Executive and the State Department and 
the Democratic National Committee have some knowledge 
which has not been communicated to us, that this treaty 
is not to be ratified, I am going to vote for the bill, and 
I am going to do so because I am heartily and sincerely in 
favor of prohibiting and preventing any immigration into 
this country of a character which we ought not to receive. 
... I put my vote for this bill solely on the ground 
that I can not assume that there is no necessity for it. If the 
treaty which we agreed to here is to be ratified by the 
Chinese Government, and if the bill which we have already 
passed to carry the treaty into effect is to be approved by 
the President of the United States, I can not see the neces- 
sity for this bill. But I will not, as a Senator, assume that 
this bill has no necessity behind it, and that it is simply and 
purely an electioneering trick, a performance on the part 
of the Democratic party and its high officials to catch votes 
in certain quarters of the United States. 

Only three members of the Senate, Hoar of Massa- 
chusetts, Brown of Georgia, and Wilson of Iowa, voted 
against the bill, and many of those who voted for it 
under the stress of what was represented by the ad- 
ministration spokesmen to be a great emergency, lived 
to regret their record. One of these was Mr. Piatt, 
who later took advantage of the opportunity to make 
amends. 

In 1892, when the ten years' period specified in the 
Act of 1882 was approaching an end, Mr. Geary of Cali- 
fornia presented in the House a bill to prohibit abso- 
lutely the coming of Chinese persons into the United 
States. The bill, having passed the House, came up 
for action in the Senate, April 25, 1892. Mr. Piatt 
offered an amendment, providing that the Act of 
October i, 1888, should be excepted from the laws 
then in force, prohibiting and regulating Chinese im- 



Fair Play Towards China i6i 

migration, which should be "continued in force for a 
period of ten years from the passage of this act." 

The Scott law had met with remonstrance from the 
Chinese Government, as in contravention of the treaty 
of 1880, and strong representations against it had been 
made to our Government, which persistently ignored 
them. Mr. Piatt declared that he could not vote for 
the bill without his amendment, and explained that he 
had voted for the Scott bill under protest. His amend- 
ment was rejected by a vote of eight to forty-five, and 
the bill was passed without a roll-call. 

At the end of a second ten-year period, in 1902, Mr. 
Piatt again had an opportunity to make an impress on 
Chinese legislation. A convention with China of Octo- 
ber 8, 1894, had restored the conditions of return to 
the earlier status. In 1902, a bill passed the House to 
prohibit the coming into, and to regulate the residence 
within, the United States, of Chinese and persons of 
Chinese descent. It was a long bill, putting into law 
all Treasury regulations and drastic provisions with 
regard to the way the law should be administered. 
When the bill came to the Senate, it gave rise to long 
debate and grave differences. The bill was pending 
for months. Mr. Piatt finally solved the difficulties by 
presenting a substitute for the bill, which, with some 
modifications, was accepted by Congress. The effect 
was to continue all laws then in force, with a provision 
that the laws were "re-enacted, extended, and con- 
tinued, so far as the same are not inconsistent with 
treaty obligations." 

In January, 1904, the Chinese Government gave notice 
of the termination on December 7th, of the treaty of 
1894, not because she wished to secure admission for 
her laborers into the United States, but because she 



i62 Orville H. Piatt 

wished to make a new treaty which should define 
more specifically the word "laborers" and thus accord 
to the higher classes the privilege of coming into the 
United States. Mr. Patterson of Colorado introduced 
a bill with the avowed object of meeting the situation 
thus created. The bill was complicated, technical, 
and stringent. Its effect would have been to exclude 
bankers, commercial brokers, and all persons of the 
higher classes, as well as laborers; to give to immigra- 
tion officers additional means to harass the Chinese, 
and still further to widen the breach between China and 
the United States. For one thing, it provided that the 
words "Chinese person " or "persons of Chinese descent " 
should be construed to mean any person descended 
from an ancestor of the Mongolian race, "which ances- 
tor is now, or was at any time subsequent to the year 
1800, a subject of the Emperor of China." 

Mr, Piatt took the lead in opposing the bill. He 
pointed out that it would exclude "a great many 
Japanese, all Koreans, a very large proportion of 
Filipinos," for they had Mongolian ancestors who were 
subjects of the Emperor of China within the last one 
hundred years: 

If they have one particle of Chinese blood from an ances- 
tor of no years ago, they are to be excluded on the state- 
ment of the inspector that he believes they had such an 
ancestor, unless right then and there they can prove the 
contrary. 

Mr. Piatt dissected the bill section by section. He 
was in constant communication with the White House, 
restraining the President, who had it in mind to send a 
special message to Congress, and keeping him advised 
as to developments in the Senate. The bill failed to 



Fair Play Towards China 163 

become a law, and Mr. Piatt's part in chloroforming it 
was generously recognized. Among the letters of 
approval, he had this from a former Secretary of State: 

I congratulate you and the country on your effective 
effort respecting the Chinese Exclusion amendment. You 
have saved us from some very discreditable legislation. 



CHAPTER XIII 

SOUND FINANCE 

First Essays in Finance — Refunding Bill of 1881 — Speech of 
February 17th — Proposes Abolition of Tax on Bank Circulation. 

FINANCIAL questions are proverbially among the 
most troublesome topics which come before 
Congress. They lead to bitter differences of opinion, 
to unreasoning debate, to sectional and class hatred. 
Beyond all other subjects of legislation, those affecting 
the coinage, banking, loans, and currency should be 
religiously divorced from politics, yet they can gen- 
erally be depended upon to excite political feeling and 
accentuate party alignments, so that it is impossible 
to consider them in accordance with simple business 
principles, to say nothing of recognized principles of 
finance. There have been few questions about which 
charlatans have so freely had their say or about which 
men conspicuously lacking in the qualities which in- 
spire confidence have presumed so cheerfully to meddle 
with the operations of a complex governmental machine. 
Not only does public finance have a curious fascination 
for theorists and those with badly balanced minds, 
but it too often weaves a spell on public men devoted 
to its study, deluding them with some fantastic scheme 
impossible to execute, even though it were to take the 
place of the admittedly imperfect system now in force. 

The wonder is that on the whole, through years of 

164 



Sound Finance 165 

turmoil, compromise, and blind experiment, the gov- 
ernment has waxed strong financially, and that a 
system which, like Topsy, has " just growed, " should 
have so many merits and so few defects. That chaos 
has not sprung from ceaseless agitation and the pro- 
mulgation of queer ideas is due in no small measure 
to the influence of men of common sense like Piatt, 
who, while pretending to no mastery of the theories 
of finance, have kept more eager spirits from plunging 
into rash extremes. Piatt never claimed to be a , 
financier, and he was quite content to leave to others 
the authoritative exposition of monetary principles. 
It was many years before he attained a position on 
the Finance Committee, yet it may be doubted whether 
the judgment of any other member of the Senate went 
farther on the subjects with which that Committee 
has to deal. " It is not more money we need, " he 
wrote once, when the question of an elastic currency 
was under discussion, " it is more sense about money, " ^ 
and that remark illustrates the way in which he always 
approached the subject. 

In concluding the first long speech he ever made in 
the Senate, he thus expressed his modest judgment of 
his own attainments: 

I have ventured to make these observations with great 
diffidence in the presence and hearing of Senators who, from ; 
study and long observation and experience, are so much 
better qualified to discuss this subject than I am. I do not 
pretend to be a financier, but I have thought that the sug- 
gestions which I have tried to make, some of them at least, 
might claim the merit of being in accordance with common 
sense; and, if so, what I have said will not be an entirely 
unworthy contribution to this discussion. 

I Letter to John H. Flagg, August, 1903. 



1 66 Orville H. Piatt 

This was his habit — to appeal to the every-day 
experience of the average man. He made no pretence 
to expert knowledge. So far as he was able, he applied 
the ordinary rules of private business to the considera- 
tion of public affairs. He had always been a " sound- 
money" man, and it happened that his first serious 
discussion of an important measure helped to fix his 
place in the Senate as a pillar of conservative finance. 

In the first session of the Forty-sixth Congress, in 
1880, Fernando Wood, from the Committee on Ways 
and Means, of which he was Chairman, had reported 
to the House a bill " To facilitate the refunding of the 
national debt. " As originally reported, it provided 
that, in lieu of the bonds authorized by the refunding 
act of July 14, 1870, bearing 5, 4I, and 4 per cent, 
interest, bonds bearing interest at the rate of 3I per 
cent., to the amount of $500,000,000, redeemable at the 
pleasure of the United States, and also Treasury notes 
in the amount of $200,000,000, bearing interest at the 
rate of 3^ per cent., redeemable at the pleasure of the 
United States after two years, and payable in ten 
years, be issued. 

The Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to 
issue any of these bonds or notes for any of the bonds 
of the United States as they became redeemable, par 
for par, the 3 J bonds to be the only bonds receivable 
as security for national bank circulation. 

The bill as introduced and reported was in harmony 
with the recommendations made by Secretary Sherman 
in his annual report, and if it had been passed in that 
form it would have saved the United States great 
sums of money, and would have measurably strength- 
ened the public credit. But the Democratic House 
tore the bill to pieces. All sorts of queer and erratic 



Sound Finance 167 

amendments were offered, and the Ways and Means 
Committee acquiesced in so many of them, that, in 
the judgment of the Secretary of the Treasury, the 
execution of the law, had it been passed, would have 
been out of the question. The rate of interest was 
reduced to 3 per cent., and a provision was made that 
no bonds should be taken as security for bank circu- 
lation, or government deposits, except the 3 per cent, 
bonds thus provided. The bill, distorted, passed the 
House on January 19, 188 1. The Senate Committee 
on Finance amended it so as to eliminate the more 
objectionable features, restoring the rate of interest 
to 3 J per cent. The bill was taken up in the Senate 
on February 15th. It was important that some 
sensible legislation should be had. In a little more 
than sixty days from that time, bonds bearing in- 
terest at 5 per cent., to the amount of $469,651,050, 
would become payable at the option of the Government. 
On the thirtieth of June two other loans, each bearing 
6 per cent., the first for $145,786,500, the second for 
$57,787,250, would also mature, at the option of the 
Government. This extravagant rate of interest might 
have been exchanged for the then reasonable rate of 
3 J per cent., if the impossible elements of Congress 
had been willing to listen to reason. It was felt by 
the masters of finance that a bond of a lower rate 
than 3 J per cent, could not be floated under conditions 
then existing, but the radicals in the Senate and in 
the House insisted that the rate should be at least 
as low as 3 per cent. It was in the days of fanatical 
opposition to the national banks, many of which were 
approaching the end of the twenty years' period for 
which they were originally chartered, and nothing 
was regarded as unreasonable which would compel 



i68 Orville H. Piatt 

the banks to accept a low rate of interest for the bonds 
required to be deposited for circulation. Twenty 
years later, it was found possible to float over $600,- 
000,000 of 2 per cent, consols, and Mr. Piatt was among 
those who favored that rate of interest in 1900. But 
that low rate of interest could not have been ob- 
tained had it not been for artificial devices, the wis- 
dom of resorting to which is now seriously in question. 
In speaking of the funding bill of February 17, 188 1, 
Mr. Piatt began by quoting the homely phrase, " It 
is better to be safe than to be sorry. " He' asked : 

What is a fair rate of interest? It is certainly not the 
highest rate which the lender would take if he could get it. 
It may not be the lowest rate at which the Government can 
induce the lender to part with his money. What is a fair 
rate of interest, if we consider only this day and this hour, 
may be a very unfair rate of interest before the five years' 
option shall expire, or before the twenty years shall have 
expired when these bonds mature. If it be found to be an 
unfair rate of interest, the result will be that these bonds 
will go below par, a disaster I think which would more than 
overbalance all the benefits to be derived from the saving 
which the Government might make in the difference be- 
tween 3 1 and 3 per cent. I believe that rate to be fairest 
and wisest and best which, during the whole period that 
these bonds are to remain outstanding, will maintain them 
at or substantially at par, always excepting times of panic, 
against which we can not provide, and the coming of which 
we can not certainly foretell. 

He then asked a question which reads somewhat 
strangely in view of the ease with which the $200,- 
000,000 Spanish War loan was floated in 1898 at three 
per cent., and $730,000,000 in consols and Panama 
bonds have been floated since 1900: 



Sound Finance 169 

Does any one who does not listen to the interested specu- 
lators of Wall Street, and whose eyes are not blinded with 
the glamour of stock speculation, believe that a three per 
cent, bond or a three and one quarter per cent, bond is to re- 
main at par in this country during the next five, ten, or 
twenty years? I think I may safely assume that the an- 
swer to that question must be in the negative ; and I suggest 
to those who desire to win a cheap glory for this Govern- 
ment in placing this bond at a lower rate of interest than 
any other government has ever been able to place its bonds, 
to consider the probability of these bonds at a three per 
cent, interest being at 90 or 85, and to ask themselves 
whether the whole country will not then point to the un- 
wisdom of their position of to-day. 

He could not tolerate the inference that, because the 
banks were largely to take the bonds, it was of no 
consequence at how low a rate of interest Congress 
could compel the banks to accept the bonds and be 
satisfied : 

I have no interest in national banks; I do not own a 
dollar of stock in a bank, and therefore I may say that I 
have no patience with the sentiment abroad in this country 
which cries "Down with the national banks!" We should 
not have a country to-day if the banking system had not 
been adopted and put in operation; we should not have 
prosperous business to-day; we should not have good times 
to-day, if it had not been for that wise system of banking — 
the wisest and the best in my judgment that exists on 
the face of the earth — a system which furnishes absolute 
security to the bill holder. No man in this broad land ever 
lost one dollar upon the bills of a national bank, and no 
man ever will. 

He did not beheve that, even at 3I per cent, interest, 
the bonds then held by national banks would be fully 
replaced by new bonds, and he suggested that any 



I70 Orville H. Piatt 

Senator put the question to " his conservative banking 
friend, as every Senator has such a friend in whom he 
places implicit confidence. " He believed that there 
must be a sudden and violent contraction of the 
national bank circulation : 

If it were not for that fact I should regard the issue of 
Treasury notes as a dangerous measure, in that it would 
inflate suddenly the currency of the country, and then as 
suddenly, when interest had accumulated upon them, con- 
tract it again. It will be my hope that to some degree they 
may supply the place made by the retirement of the national 
bank circulation under this act. 

He would rather pay four per cent, than three per 
cent, and he believed that with the exception of the 
men in Wall Street who, for purposes of speculation, 
were running government bonds up beyond their 
intrinsic value, the business men of the country would 
prefer that the rate should be four per cent, rather than 
less than three and a half per cent. : 

This Government, if the bond is really worth more than 
par at three and a half per cent., will reap its advantage in the 
increased premium; the Government will lose nothing; and 
it will thus prevent a loss falling eventually upon that class 
of people who are least able to bear it, to a great extent, 
and whom we least desire should bear the loss, if any there 
is to be. 

But the rate of interest that is to be paid in business trans- 
actions during the next five, ten, or twenty years, is to be 
largely affected by the rate of interest which ' the Govern- 
ment places upon this loan. I know that the government 
rate of interest is not the only thing which influences the 
business rate of interest; but it does influence it; it does 
have its effect upon it. When you reduce the government 
interest, there follows or goes along with it a reduction in the 



Sound Finance 171 

business rate of interest. The business rate of interest is a 
most important factor in the future prosperity of this coun- 
try. If it be too low there is danger in it as surely as if it 
be too high. If the rate of interest be too high, what is the 
result? It eats up capital, it eats up the capital invested 
in all business enterprises, and bankruptcy follows, hard 
times follow. And what if it be too low? The capitalists 
seek other avenues for investment, they are tempted into 
speculative enterprises, and they will do what they are doing 
to-day — put their money at risk for the sake of obtaining 
a higher rate of interest than the current rate. What is the 
result of that? Overspeculation, overtrading, followed by 
panic, by depression, by hard times. What this country 
needs, what the business of the country needs, is a stable, 
fair rate of interest, one which shall neither be too high nor 
too low; and I think in fixing the rate of this government 
loan we should have in view the influence that the govern- 
ment rate of interest is to have upon the business rate of 
interest. 

Mr. President, all these considerations lead me to hope 
that the recommendation of the Committee will be adopted ; 
that we shall neither make the rate 3 per cent., nor 3I 
per cent., nor shall we change the recommendation of the 
Committee by saying at a rate not exceeding 3 J per cent. 
I think there is great force in the fact that when you are 
dealing with the men of Wall Street, as you must to a cer- 
tain extent deal with them in placing this loan, it is not 
wise to say to them: "We will sell our bonds at 3 per cent, 
if you will take them; if not, we will let you have them 
at 3 J." I beHeve that the legislative branch of the Govern- 
ment should fix a rate at which it knows, as well as it can 
be iassured of anything, that the loan will be placed, and 
placed quickly, and that rate should be certain, not left 
to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury. 

In spite of the attitude of the administration and 
the arguments of some of the most influential Demo- 



172 OrvJlle H. Piatt 

cratic Senators, among them Mr. Bayard, Chairman 
of the Finance Committee, the Senate, after long 
debate, disagreed to the amendments of the Com- 
mittee and passed the bill substantially as it came from 
the House. Had the bill become a law in this form, 
it would have imperilled the national banking system, 
and the fear of this result caused a serious flurry in 
the money market during the last week in February, 
while the country was awaiting the action of the Presi- 
dent. On the 3d of March the President returned the 
bill with his veto. " Under Section 5 of the bill, " he 
said : 

It is obvious that no additional banks will hereafter be 
organized except possibly in a few cities or localities where 
the prevailing rates of interest in ordinary business are 
extremely low. No new banks can be organized and no 
increase of the capital of existing banks can be obtained, 
except by the purchase and deposit of 3 per cent, bonds. 
No other bonds of the United States can be used for the 
purpose. The one thousand millions of other bonds re- 
cently issued by the United States, and bearing a higher 
interest than 3 per cent., and therefore a better security 
for the bill holders, cannot, after the first of July next, be 
received as security for bank circulation. This is a radical 
change in the banking law. It takes from the banks the 
right they heretofore had under the law to purchase and 
deposit as security for the circulation any of the bonds 
issued by the United States, and deprives the bill holder 
of the best security which the banks are able to give, by 
requiring them to deposit bonds having the least value of 
any bonds issued by the Government. 

Two years later, on February 10, 1883, during the 
second session of the Forty-seventh Congress, during 
the debate on a bill reducing internal-revenue duties. 



Sound Finance 173 

Mr. Piatt made a proposition to abolish the tax on 
national-bank circulation, thus bringing down on his 
head the reproaches of Mr. Sherman and Mr. Morrill, 
then at the head of the Finance Committee. The bill, 
which became a law on March 3, 1883, described, 
among other taxes to be abolished, the tax on bank 
checks, bank capital, and bank deposits. During its 
consideration in the Senate, Mr. Piatt moved to 
amend, by inserting the words: 

"And on bank circulation, as provided in the third 
clause of Section 3408 of the Revised Statutes of the 
United States. " 

In advocating this amendment, he said: 

If we are to remove all the internal-revenue taxes except 
the tax on whiskey and a portion of the tax on tobacco, I 
can see no reason why the tax should be left upon the 
circulation of banks. I can see no reason why the tax 
should be removed from bank deposits and bank capital, 
and be left upon bank circulation. There are, to my 
mind, many reasons why, if a discrimination is to be 
made, the tax upon circulation should be repealed, and 
not upon deposits; and I will state them very briefly: 

The deposit tax is the tax easiest paid by the banks. The 
repeal of the tax on deposits will relieve the banks which 
least need relief. The repeal of the tax upon circulation 
will relieve the banks which most need relief. Of course 
the city banks are the great deposit banks of the country; 
they have deposits many times in excess of their capital, 
and they are banks of small circulation. When you go 
into the country, the conditions are reversed. The country 
banks are banks of small deposits and of large circulation. 
... If there is to be any tax left on banks it should be 
the tax on deposits, and the tax on circulation should 
be repealed for the benefit of the country banks, the weak 
banks, the conservative banks, the banks that never 



174 Orville H. Piatt 

indulge in or countenance speculation, and are conducted 
for the benefit of the people and the business interests of 
the communities where they are located. 

Mr. Sherman denounced this proposition as mon- 
strous, and Mr. Morrill expressed regret that the subject 
had been introduced. No vote was taken on the 
amendment, and nothing more was ever heard of it. 
The tax on circulation remained at one per cent, until 
the passage of the law of 1900, which reduced the tax 
to one-half per cent., when circulation is secured by 
two per cent, consols. Recent proposals to abolish al- 
together the tax on circulation secured by two per 
cents, have not been denounced as "monstrous." 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE FREE-SILVER DELUSION 

A Genuine Bimetallist — Opposes Coin Certificates in 1888 — The 

Sherman Law of 1890 — Opponent of Free Silver — Objects 

to Hasty Repeal — Retaliation against Great Britain. 

WHEN Piatt became a Senator, free silver was a 
dormant issue. The Greenback heresy had seen 
its day, and its devotees had shifted their allegiance 
to the " dollar of the Fathers " as the next worst thing. 
The Democratic party, from force of habit, had ac- 
cepted the new doctrine, and they were reinforced by 
Republicans from silver-mining States, while other Re- 
publicans weakly wavered. The issue had been joined 
in Congress, resulting in a compromise upon the so-called 
Bland- AlHson Silver Act of 1878, which was as far from 
satisfying the advocates of free-silver coinage as the 
friends of a stable medium of exchange, but which for 
a time served as a makeshift to keep the silver question 
out of Congress except for sporadic outbursts of 
debate. 1 Though the question was kept out of Con- 
gress, the friends of silver were not idle. After the 
election of Cleveland in 1884, they made a vigorous 
demonstration, which was held in check only by the 
President's firm stand against the majority of his own 

I The Democratic House had passed a straight free-coinage bill 
under suspension of the rules by a vote of 163 to 34. The measure 
was modified by the Senate, which had a Republican majority. 

175 



176 Orville H. Piatt 

party, and which so impressed itself upon the poHtics 
of the day, that when the Repubhcans returned to 
power in 1888 they found it necessary to consider 
further legislation which, stopping short of free coinage, 
should mollify prevailing sentiment by providing for 
a larger use of silver. 
\ Piatt had been a sturdy antagonist of the Greenback 
propaganda. He was opposed not only to inflation 
but to the greenback in itself, and up to the end he 
seldom touched upon the currency in any form without 
uttering a note of warning against that survival of 
the operation of Civil War finance. He was just as 
sturdy an opponent of free silver at the ratio of 16 to 
I, but he had no prejudice against silver as a medium 
of exchange. He was an international bimetallist, 
and so he always remained. With him bimetallism 
was not a political evasion, it was a serious economic 
proposition. He believed there was a place for both 
silver and gold in the currency of the world, if the 
great commercial nations would agree, and he believed 
that the danger of silver coinage would be greatly 
mitigated if the coin itself were used in the currency 
instead of silver certificates issued by the Government. 
Holding these views, it fell to his lot to be of material 
service in bringing hostile forces together and so pre- 
venting the enactment of a free-coinage law, when that 
peril was imminent in 1890. 

He first declared his position in the Senate on the 
silver question in the course of a debate during the 
first session of the Fiftieth Congress in 1888 on an 
amendment offered by Stewart of Nevada to a bill 
"To provide for the purchase of United States bonds 
by the Secretary of the Treasury." Stewart proposed 
to authorize the issue of coin certificates at United 



The Free-Silver Delusion 177 

States mints and assay offices in return for deposits 
of gold and silver bullion, the price of silver bullion 
to be stated by the Secretary of the Treasury on the 
first and fifteenth of each calendar month, but not to 
exceed $1 for 41 2 J grains of silver, nine-tenths fine. 
In the opinion of Mr. Piatt this proposition reeked 
with financial heresy, and he spoke with force and 
earnestness against it. The decline in the price of 
silver, after the enactment of the Bland- Allison act, 
had been responsible largely for the continued agita- 
tion of the silver question, and the advocates of the 
pending amendment insisted that its enactment would 
put silver at par. Mr. Piatt reminded them that silver 
had declined, as all other things declined, because there 
had been an over-production of it in the world — more 
than was required for coinage and other uses, including 
manufacturing and the arts : 

Why should the adoption of the proposed measure put 
silver at par? Because it will furnish a customer for all 
the silver that can be mined in the whole world. And 
what will be the effect of that? Simply that mining will 
be more profitable, will attract new capital, will enlist 
new enterprise, and the more it is produced the more the 
Government must take of it and issue the coin cer- 
tificates for it, and this not only in the United States, but 
throughout the world. There is nothing to prevent the 
bringing of silver to this country, and there is nothing 
to prevent any foreigner, anybody on the whole face of the 
wide globe, from bringing all his surplus silver to the 
Treasury of the United States and taking the coin cer- 
tificates of this Government for it. 

If this bill passes, the Senator from Nevada may well 
say there will be prosperity. There will, but it will be the 
prosperity which comes with inflation, to be followed at 
last by worse adversity. The history of the world has 



178 Orville H. Piatt 

shown that when a government begins, upon the demand 
for more money, to increase its paper money, there is no 
end of that increase and inflation except absolute bank- 
ruptcy and financial ruin. 

The Stewart amendment was absorbed in an amend- 
ment offered by Mr. Beck, of Kentucky, substituting 
coin certificates for the existing gold and silver 
certificates. The Beck amendment was adopted 
by a vote of 38 to 13 and Mr. Piatt was enrolled with 
the small minority. The bill, thus amended, passed 
the Senate on April 5, 1888, without division. It 
never became a law but the popular call for free coinage 
continued. It became so strong that at the beginning 
of the new administration in 1889, Secretary Windom, 
with the approval of President Harrison, submitted 
to Congress, in his first annual report, his plan for 
increasing the use of silver in circulation. This plan 
provided that the Treasury Department should pur- 
chase silver bullion every month to a limited extent, 
paying therefor Treasury notes receivable for govern- 
ment dues, and payable on demand in gold, or in 
silver bullion at the current market rate, at the time 
of payment, and that the purchase of silver bullion 
and the compulsory coinage of silver dollars under the 
Act of 1878 should close. On the twenty-eighth of 
January, 1890, Senator Morrill, Chairman of the 
Finance Committee, introduced a bill prepared by the 
Secretary of the Treasury and embodying his views. 
The bill was reported favorably by the Finance Com- 
mittee with certain amendments. Its important sec- 
tion was the first, which authorized the Secretary of 
the Treasury to purchase $4,500,000 worth of silver 
bullion each month and to issue in payment therefor 
Treasury notes receivable for customs and all public 



The Free-Silver Delusion 179 

dues, and redeemable on demand in lawful money of 
the United States; when so redeemed to be cancelled. 
A similar bill had been passed by the House, the 
principal difference being that under the House bill 
the notes to be issued were full legal tender, and the 
Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to redeem 
them in gold coin or silver bullion at the market rate. 

The Senate considered these measures at intervals 
for over three months in a notable debate, into which 
entered every question connected with the financial 
operations of the Government since the war. 

The debate was carried on largely by the friends of 
free silver, who declaimed at great length of the ini- 
quity of the "Crime of '73 "; for the proposal of the Fi- 
nance Committee and the bill passed by the House were 
a long way from meeting their demands. The opponents 
of free silver contented themselves, as a rule, with 
replying to the arguments advanced, and with taking 
up, point by point, questions as they arose during 
the discussion. Mr. Piatt had little to say except to 
interpolate an occasional query. Toward the end 
of the debate, on June 13, 1890, he interrupted a 
speech of Mr. Stewart with the following comment: 

Does the Senator believe — and he has paid great atten- 
tion to this subject, and his opinion is entitled to great 
weight — that if the maximum amount now provided by 
law to be coined into silver dollars were to be coined, the 
result of that would be to restore the equivalency in value 
between the gold and silver dollar.'' Because if he does 
and is correct in his supposition, I confess that it seems 
to me that is a ground upon which we might all come 
together. . . . 

If the Senator will permit me one other word, some of 
us have this difficulty : We feel that if we use the two metals 



I So Orville H. Piatt 

as money — and we feel that we ought to do it — the material 
of which a dollar is composed in each metal ought to be 
the same. I do not suppose that in 1878, if it had been 
an original proposition, anybody would have thought of 
coining a silver dollar of which the material was not of the 
same commercial value as the material in the gold dollar; 
but it was thought that a great wrong had been done, that 
silver had been demonetized when the material of which 
the dollar was composed was worth as much as the gold 
dollar, and that wrong ought to be righted, and that we 
ought to take the same ratio although the value of the 
silver had depreciated; and that, I understand, was the 
ground upon which the bill of 1878 was passed. 

Now, if there is any way in which we can get back so as 
to have the material of which one dollar is composed of 
the same value of which the other dollar is composed, 
then we should all get back upon a common platform. 

Four days later, on June 17th, an amendment pro- 
posed by Senator Plumb, striking out the first section 
of the bill and inserting in its place an unqualified 
provision for the free coinage of silver at 16 to i, was 
adopted by a vote of 43 to 24, the favoring votes coming 
from the Democratic side of the chamber, and from 
Republican Senators of silver-producing States. 

The ultimate result was the Sherman Silver act. 
Mr. Sherman was at the head of the Conference Com- 
mittee for the Senate and Mr. Conger of Iowa for the 
House. It took nearly three weeks for the Conference 
Committee to approach a reconciliation of the wide 
differences between the two sides, and Senator Piatt 
had more to do than almost any other man in bringing 
the free silver Senators to accept a compromise. 
When the report was finally made, on July 7th, Senator 
Harris of Tennessee, and Representative Bland of 
Missouri, the Democratic free silver members of the 



The Free-Silver Delusion i8i 

conference, refused to sign it. The bill as finally 
passed provided for the purchase of 4,500,000 ounces 
of silver bullion per month, instead of $4,500,000, a 
change, which, owing to the subsequent fall in the 
price of silver, reduced the amount to be purchased. 
It also contained an important new clause, declaring 
the purpose of the Government to maintain the parity 
of the metals. 

Mr. Sherman, from whom the act took its name, 
although he was not primarily responsible for it, de- 
clared a few years later that he was ready to repeal 
it the day it became a law, if repeal could have been 
had without substituting in its place absolute free 
coinage. Mr. Piatt, while no more nearly satisfied 
with the act than others, was never carried away 
with the clamor against it which began almost im- 
mediately, grew in volume after the election of Cleve- 
land in 1892, and continued unabated until after the 
repeal of the purchasing clause in the following autumn. 
Having voted for the law as a compromise, and worked 
for it to avoid the evil of free coinage, which was 
threatening, and which would surely have carried in 
the House after passing the Senate, had it not been for 
the superb courage of Speaker Reed, he was never 
ready to denounce it as an unquestioned evil in itself, 
although with other Republican Senators in 1893, he 
upheld the hands of President Cleveland in voting 
for the repeal. 

During the winter of 1892-93, succeeding the second 
election of President Cleveland, Eastern Democratic 
and Mugwump newspapers and periodicals, unwilling 
to acknowledge the threat of tariff revision to be re- 
sponsible for the then impending financial disturbance, 
entered upon a crusade for the repeal of the Sherman 



i82 Orville H. Piatt 

law, demanding that the Congress then in session 
enter at once upon that imperative task, and ignoring 
the obvious fact that no legislation of such importance 
could be agreed upon by a Republican Senate and a 
Democratic House in the few weeks remaining before the 
fourth of March, when a single free silver Senator, 
with stout lungs, was physically capable of preventing 
any legislation whatever. One of those who joined 
in the cry was Henry C. Bowen, editor of the New 
York Indepe'ndent, who sent to his old friend, Mr. 
Piatt, a galley proof of an editorial entitled " Repeal 
the Silver Law " which was going to appear in his publi- 
cation. Mr. Piatt wrote him a letter of mild reproof, 
which contained food for thought: 

A galley proof of the article in The Independent of 
January fifth, entitled "Repeal the Silver Law," has been 
sent me. I suppose it reflects your views as well as the 
views of the paper. 

In my opinion, however, some things ought to be con- 
sidered, which do not seem to have attracted the attention 
of people who are so earnestly urging the repeal of that law. 

First. By means of it the country has been furnished 
with a circulation amounting to practically $4,500,000 a 
month since August, 1890. That this addition has not 
been more than was needed is shown conclusively, I think, 
by the fact that it has not resulted in an increase of prices, 
and therefore is not in any sense inflation. I believe, 
moreover, that the prosperity of the country has been 
full as much due to this increase of currency — which some- 
what keeps pace with our increase of population and 
business — as to our tariff legislation or any other thing. 
Without it we should have had relative contraction, and, 
I think, more or less financial distress. And now when 
the Treasury is running on a somewhat narrow margin, 
and every little scare operates to make a squeeze in money, 



The Free-Silver Delusion 183 

can we afford to cut off this circulation without putting 
something in its place? 

I see your article suggests that this should be done. To 
that I reply that the substitution of any other form of 
circulation is a practical impossibihty. Three methods 
are spoken of : 

First, — the increase of national bank circulation, which 
is absolutely hopeless. New York does not realize the 
temperof the country, which is much more likely in the next 
administration to prohibit the issue of currency by national 
banks than to increase it. Of course, I regret this temper. 
But the increased issue of national bank circulation cannot, 
in my judgment, get the vote of one third of the Senate 
or House. 

Second, — a return to the "Bland" act. I would rather 
buy four and a half million ounces of silver a month, and 
issue treasury notes to the exact amount of purchase, 
than to buy two millions a month and coin it into three 
millions, and issue silver certificates to the amount of 
three millions for the purchase of two. 

Third, — the repeal of the tax on State bank circulation, 
which is the only probable method of continuing the in- 
crease of currency, if the so-called Sherman law should 
be repealed. I am convinced that the Democratic party, 
with Mr. Cleveland at its head, does intend to do this, if 
it can repeal the present law ; and I would rather continue 
the Sherman law than resort to that. 

Have you thought of the probable effect of repealing 
or suspending the Sherman law, upon the price of silver, 
and if it should result in a further serious fall whether 
that would not precipitate a premium on gold quicker than 
a further continuance of silver purchases? The present 
law makes a market for more than one third of the world's 
product of silver. Suppose that demand to be with- 
drawn, and that silver should fall from its price of about 
67 cents on the dollar of gold to, say, 50 cents on the dollar, 
how long would it be before the Treasury notes which have 



i84 Orville H. Piatt 

been issued since August, 1890, payable in "coin," would 
be presented at the Treasury for redemption? The Treas- 
ury would feel bound to pay them in gold as long as it 
could, and how long could it? 

The silver certificates issued upon the coined dollars are 
redeemable only in silver by law. But would they continue 
to circulate at par with a gold dollar, if silver should fall 
to 50 cents on the dollar? In the downward course of 
silver a point would be reached where gold would go to a 
premium. It might not be at 50 cents on the dollar; but 
there is a point somewhere in the downward price of silver 
when the silver certificates and the silver dollar would not 
pass for the equal of the gold dollar, and then gold would 
be immediately at a premium. 

There is but one answer to this, and that is that the 
situation is not to be ultimately relieved by a further con- 
tinuance of silver purchases. But I have thought that 
perhaps the production of silver was now being reduced 
by the low price, and that except for the fact that the 
Sherman law might be repealed in the near future, silver 
would be likely to advance to a price where the entire 
amount purchased under that law would be equal to all the 
certificates that have been issued. 

The problem is one of great difficulty. I believe the 
evil day can be longer postponed by continuing the pur- 
chase of silver than by immediate cessation, without the 
possibility of putting into circulation a similar amount of 
currency in the place of that now being issued. 

Finally. We are still bound until next May in good 
faith to try to bring about an international agreement 
for the enlarged use of silver, or for an international coin- 
age arrangement ; and it would be discreditable to a nation 
that has solicited the conference to attempt to bulldoze 
the conference by refusing to use silver at all. My own 
judgment is that it is better to wait till that conference re- 
assembles next May, and then if we cannot get some inter- 
national agreement for the enlarged use of silver or for an 



The Free-Silver Delusion 185 

international coinage agreement, to tell the conference that 
the United States would be compelled in self-defence to 
change its policy with regard to its use. 

My view, too, is that when that change is made, it should 
be a gradual cessation of purchase rather than a total 
suspension. 

These expressions of mine are purely tentative. I do 
not know how I should vote on a given bill, which might 
come up for action. But it seems strange to me that people 
who assume such financial wisdom should apparently have 
never thought of these things. 

In spite of obvious reasons for letting the currency 
alone during the short session, the unthinking demand 
persisted, inspired chiefly by doctrinaires with heads 
in the clouds, profoundly oblivious to parliamentary 
possibilities. Politicians, to ingratiate themselves with 
the newspapers, feigned acquiescence in the demand. 
David B. Hill, of New York, introduced a bill to repeal 
the purchasing clause of the Sherman act, and on 
February 6, 1893, less than a month before Congress 
must come to an end, he moved to take it up for con- 
sideration. It was a political play, and every Senator 
knew it, but, confronted with the issue, most of the 
gold standard Republicans, for the sake of the record, 
felt compelled to vote in the affirmative. Mr. Piatt 
could not bring himself to do this, but joined the free 
silver Republicans and the Democrats in defeating the 
motion. To his friend John Flagg he wrote: 

I fear that I displeased my Connecticut friends to-day 
in not voting to take up the silver question, but the thing 
was so plainly and manifestly a mere fencing for political 
advantage, that I was sick of the whole matter. Every 
Senator who voted to take it up knew there was not the 
slightest opportunity to get it to a vote, and I did not 



1 86 Orville H. Piatt 

propose to vote to embarrass the business of the session. 
I am not quite sure that I am in favor of a repeal of the 
Sherman law anyway. I should vote against it at this 
session, but possibly next session I should vote for it. 
I don't think it is just fair to nations that we have asked 
to take part in the conference to change the situation 
while the conference continues. I think it would have an 
unfavorable effect upon the conference, and what I sin- 
cerely desire is an international agreement for the free 
coinage of silver. I confess I don't know what is going 
to happen if we can't get it. I think to discontinue the 
use of silver as money absolutely, would send it down to a 
point where we would be quite as likely to get on to a 
silver basis as we shall by continuing the law. 

The pressure continued, the expected financial 
panic arrived, President Cleveland called Congress 
in special session to repeal the purchasing clause of 
the Sherman law, and after many dreary weeks of 
debate, the clause was repealed. Mr. Piatt and the 
majority of Republican Senators voted for the repeal, 
in company with a few Democrats, but it has never yet 
been demonstrated that the repeal of the act materially 
relieved the financial distress which continued until a 
succession of Republican victories had at last assured 
the great industrial interests of an end to experimental 
legislation. 

The next opportunity which Mr. Piatt accepted to 
discuss the silver question was during the debate on 
the Wilson-Gorman Tariff bill in the spring of 1894. 
Mr. Lodge, at that time one of the youngest members 
of the Senate, had introduced the following amendment 
to the bill : 

Except that when not in contravention of any existing 
treaty, any article made dutiable in the following sections 



The Free-Silver Delusion 187 

shall, if it is the product or manufacture of Great Britain 
or of any of the colonies of Great Britain, pay a duty 
double that herein imposed ; and any article upon the free 
list in the preceding section shall, if the product or manu- 
facture of Great Britain or of any of the colonies of Great 
Britain, pay a duty of 35% ad valorem; and such ad- 
ditional and discriminating duties shall remain in force 
until Great Britain shall assent to, and take part in, an 
international agreement with the United States for the coin- 
age and use of silver and shall close whenever Great Britain 
shall assent to, and take part in, such international agree- 
ment for the coinage of silver. 

This proposed amendment, which attracted much 
attention at the time, was in line with the professions 
of the Republican party as declared in its platforms, 
and was intended to demonstrate the sincerity of the 
demand for an international agreement, which hitherto 
had been rendered ineffectual through the immobility 
of British statesmanship. 

Mr. Piatt, as has been said, was a constant advocate 
of bimetallism under an international agreement, and 
on May 2, 1894, he spoke in support of the Lodge 
amendment : 

I beHeve myself to be and claim to be a bimetallist. I 
know that there is a difference in the definition of that 
word. I know that my friends who are in favor of the free 
coinage of silver by the United States alone, do not admit 
that any one is a bimetalHst unless he agrees with them and 
supports the free coinage of silver by the United States 
alone. I am a bimetalHst and honestly so in the sense 
that I desire, if it be possible with safety to the country, 
that we shall have free coinage of silver. If that be not 
possible I desire to use all the silver that we may safely 
use in this country as a legal-tender money. 

The difference between myself and those who insist 



i88 Orville H. Piatt 

upon free coinage by the United States alone is that they 
believe it would be better for the United States acting 
independently to adopt the free coinage and use of silver. 
I believe that that would be more disastrous to the United 
States than to pursue our present policy of keeping the 
silver which we have in use and waiting until such time 
as the world will engage in the free coinage of silver or the 
limited use of silver. 

I recognize the fact that all that stands in the way to-day 
of the free coinage of silver by the commercial nations of 
the world at a ratio of i6 to i or 15J to i is the attitude 
of Great Britain, and I think that the passage of this 
amendment, passed as it ought to be by both sides of the 
chamber, would be an admonition and a voice which 
Great Britain could not refuse to hear. 

I agree to a certain extent with those whom I may call 
my silver friends, that the scarcity of gold in the world 
for many purposes has been productive of great disaster, 
has been to a large extent responsible for falling prices and 
unremunerative business. Perhaps I would disagree with 
them as to the extent to which that cause has operated. 
I have no doubt I should disagree with them in supposing 
that other causes were potent in the fall of prices and the 
unremunerative character of business; but that the appre- 
ciation of gold and its ever-increasing scarcity for money 
uses have to a great extent destroyed values and made 
business unprofitable I do agree. That Great Britain 
stands directly in the path of the use of silver and stands 
there almost alone, I think is unquestionable. Therefore, 
I desire by the passage of this amendment that we may 
do something which will convince England that it is no 
longer to her interest to stand in the position of the usurious 
creditor of the world, something which may open her eyes 
to the fact that there is for her a path of greatness and 
prosperity aside from the mere lending of money and taking 
the interest in gold, and cheapening the prices of these com- 
modities and things which she desires to buy and must buy. 



CHAPTER XV 



PAPER MONEY 



Continued Agitation for Free Silver — Opposes Fictitious "Seignior- 
age" in 1895 — Criticism of the Greenbacks — For Sound 
Money in 1896. 

OF course, nobody of political intelligence expected 
that the repeal of the purchasing clause of the 
Sherman act would settle the silver question. The 
controversy was bound to persist until it had furnished 
the compelling issue in a campaign for the Presidency, 
and until, through an unforeseen increase in the produc- 
tion of gold, with a consequent expansion of the cir- 
culating medium, it became merely an academic dispute. 
The friends of silver would not acknowledge defeat, 
nor could they rest. They tantalized jaded industries 
with one and another alluring bait, seeking fatuously 
to tease their way to recognition. It was only a little 
more than a year after the repeal, at a time when no 
significant financial legislation by any chance could be 
enacted, that the Democratic majority of the Senate 
Finance Committee reported a bill with no other appar- 
ent purpose than to play for political position. The 
bill as originally introduced was to provide "for the 
issue of bonds, the coinage of silver, and for other 
purposes." Under the merciless pruning of the Finance 
Committee it was reduced to a single paragraph, which 
meant in simple English that any owner of silver buUion, 

189 



I90 Orville H. Piatt 

without limit of quantity, might sell it to the United 
States at its market price, receiving for it silver dollars 
and certificates issued upon the silver dollars, and that 
the United States should make a profit of the difference 
between the market value and the coinage of the silver 
which it purchased — a fictitious "seigniorage." The 
bill was defended by its advocates, but there was 
practically no argument in opposition, until Mr. Piatt, 
on February 19, 1895, took the floor. He declared that 
of all the measures suggested to Congress for a larger 
use of silver, this was the most indefensible, and that 
" of all the foolish, illogical, impracticable methods for 
the use of silver" none had ever equalled it. He 
declared, moreover, that there was not a Senator in 
the chamber who really wanted the bill to become a 
law. He derided the so-called " seigniorage " in the 
bill. The provision by which the Government of the 
United States was to pay for the silver delivered to it, 
and that moment have it worth twice as much as it 
was in the hands of the seller, was not a seigniorage : 

No government in the world has ever, to my knowledge, 
attempted the making of money out of the business of 
coining money except the Government of the United 
States. It would not be tolerated, I think, anywhere else. 

If the bill should pass, he said the very pleasing 
fiction that by thus deaHng with silver bullion the 
Government was making one hundred per cent, profit 
at the present price of silver would disappear : 

It will prove not to have been a profit at all. If the 
time should ever come when, by reason of the extent of 
its purchases of silver, gold and silver should part company 
as to value, and the gold dollar should become more valuable 
in purchasing and debt-paying power than the silver dollar. 



Paper Money 191 

the moment that occurs, if it does occur, then it will be 
seen that all this supposed advantage of one hundred per 
cent, profit in the purchase of silver was not a profit 
after all ; and the loss will fall not upon the Government, 
not upon the man who sold the silver to the Government, 
but upon the man who holds the coins which the Govern- 
ment issues in the purchase of the silver, or which it coined 
after having paid for the silver and used it, for other 
purposes. 

He acknowledged that he was a bimetallist and ex- 
pressed his belief that, if we could have an international 
agreement among the commercial nations, the world 
could use as money all the silver produced, without in 
any way impairing the value of the silver money : 

I have not lost hope of international bimetallism. I 
think we may be very much encouraged at the present 
time to hope that international bimetallism is a thing of 
the not very remote future. 

If it should be shown that England and Germany 
utterly and absolutely for all time refused to engage 
with the United States in an international agreement 
for the enlarged use of silver, he would be willing, and 
would advocate, that the United States join with such 
commercial nations as were willing to engage in an 
international monetary conference for that purpose. 

The most significant passage of the speech was that 
in which he impressed upon his hearers a few whole- 
some truths about the currency system of the United 
States, and outlined what, in his opinion, would be 
genuine currency reform. His conclusions are as valid 
now as then: 

I believe the vice of our whole financial situation lies 
in our paper currency. ... I regard it as one of the most 



192 Orville H. Piatt 

unfortunate epochs in the history of the United States 
when under a supposed and a real necessity we departed 
from the ancient methods and practices and customs of 
the Government to simply coin the metals, silver and gold, 
and resorted to a paper currency. No country ever did 
it, whether the paper was redeemable or irredeemable, 
that did not suffer for it in the end. 

When we resorted to the greenback I venture to say 
that there were not ten public men in the United States 
who claimed that it was a sound financial measure. The 
men who advocated it, the men who insisted upon it, 
resorted to it upon the plea of necessity only, acknow- 
ledging that it was unsound finance, promising that when 
the war should be over and our great expenses arising from 
the war should no longer have to be met, greenbacks 
would be retired from circulation, never for a moment ad- 
mitting or supposing that they could pass into our financial 
system; but they have been incorporated in our system. 

In addition to that amount of paper money, the green- 
backs, we have about $480,000,000 of silver paper. We 
have in this country, then, about $875,000,000 of paper 
money. That money is responsible for the growth of 
paternalism in this country. The people from coming 
to believe that it was not sound finance, that the only 
function of government with regard to money was to coin 
gold and silver, placing the government stamp upon the 
metal and delivering it to the person who should bring 
it to the mint, and regulating the value of it, have come 
now to beheve that in some way or other it is the function 
of government to furnish money to the people, to believe 
that it is one of the functions of government to make every 
man's business as profitable as the man himself shalldesire 
it to be. It is the inherent vice of government paper 
money that the people look to the government to furnish 
them with money and to regulate the money of the 
government so that they ^can be prosperous in their 
business. ... 



Paper Money 193 

The whole country has become demorahzed with this 
idea that the Government may properly and wisely issue 
paper money, and regulate not alone the value of money, 
but the value and conduct of all business throughout the 
country thereby. There never was a more fatal govern- 
mental heresy than that national benefit is to be derived 
from issues of governmental paper. . . . Any nation that 
issues its promise-to-pay as money has embarked on a road 
where it is almost impossible to turn about, the end of 
which is disaster and financial distress and ruin. 

My greatest objection to the use of silver is in the issuing 
of paper money upon it. There is where the danger hes. 
We can maintain at a parity with gold coin all the silver 
coin at a ratio of i6 to i which the people will use as coin, 
but I firmly believe that we cannot maintain at a parity 
with gold all the silver upon which we can issue paper money 
in this country. . . . One thing is true, and that is that 
if there are two kinds of money the bulhon value of which 
differs materially the cheaper kind will drive out the more 
valuable kind if it becomes sufficiently redundant. That 
is denied by no one. If we continue the purchase of silver, 
the bullion of which has only a gold value of fifty cents to 
the dollar, and continue putting out paper upon it without 
limitation, we shall finally arrive at that point where the 
cheaper money will drive out the more valuable money 
and where gold will go to a premium. . . . You can use 
two metals of different bullion value together to a certain 
extent. If the United States Government should stamp 
41 2 J grains of copper as a dollar, receive it for government 
dues, make it a legal tender, and put no more of it in circu- 
lation than was fairly required for the payment of govern- 
ment dues, and to meet perhaps the views of some few 
people who beheve that the stamp of the Government is 
all that is needed, it could carry copper dollars of 41 2 J 
grains to a certain extent just as well as it can silver dollars 
of 41 2 J grains, when the bullion in the dollar is only worth 
half as much as the gold dollar. But, if you kept that 
13 



194 Orville H. Piatt 

process up, and issued those copper dollars until they were 
vastly in excess of what was required to be used for the 
payment of the government dues, and in excess of the 
amount used by those who believed that the Government 
stamp will carry anything as a dollar, when the amount 
exceeded those requirements, then those dollars would 
become valuable only as copper. So, if by this system of 
issuing paper upon silver you get into circulation more 
silver than is required for the use of payments to be made 
to the Government, and up to a point where a majority 
beheve that there is too much of it, then the silver which 
the paper represents will be valuable as silver only. . . . 

The trouble is that the Government has gone into the 
banking business, and no financial measure which does 
not look to the retirement of the Government from the 
banking business is going to be of anything but temporary 
avail. When we settle this question, we must settle it 
upon sound financial principles. That is our trouble now. 
With $875,000,000 of paper money out, $346,000,000 of 
which is directly redeemable, if not by law, by our customs, 
in gold, and $155,000,000 more of what are called "Sher- 
man-purchase-act notes" which have also been treated 
as being redeemable in gold, we have in round numbers 
nearly $500,000,000 of paper money to be redeemed in 
gold, and in addition to that are the national bank notes, 
which may come in for gold redemption. I do not speak 
of that, however, because I am speaking of the absolute 
government paper money. What does that involve, Mr. 
President? It involves our keeping a fund of gold in the 
United States Treasury all the while lying idle, until demand 
may be made upon the Treasury for redemption. It in- 
volves our keeping sufficient gold there so that every one 
will be satisfied that there can be redemption under all 
circumstances. 

We have by law put it out of our power to get a dollar 
of gold into the Treasury except by borrowing it. Then 
comes the necessity of meeting a demand for gold in our 



Paper Money 195 

foreign payments, and so the gold is gradually or rapidly 
depleted from the Treasury, when we fill it up, as it were, 
with a sufficient reserve fund. This thing is to go on 
forever. So long as our present system of paper money 
continues there is no relief from it. . . . 

If we had not departed from the old system of coining 
gold and silver for the persons who brought it to the mint 
and in paying our own obligations in coin, or in the checks 
and bills of exchange which make up so large a proportion 
of the payments of this country, we should have no trouble. 
All this idea that the people have a right to depend upon 
the Government through its money transactions and its 
issue of paper money to regulate their affairs to their 
liking would not be present, and this paternalism, sociaHsm, 
and populism, latent or rampant, would never have got 
such a foothold in this country if it had not been encouraged 
by the false financial system of paper money which we 
have inaugurated. 

I know that in the minds of a great many people I am 
talking financial heresy. I remember when I first came 
into the Senate a message was received from the President 
in favor of the continued retirement of greenbacks, and I 
saw the remarkable spectacle of the Secretary of the 
Treasury recommending that there should be no further 
retirement of greenbacks. 

The difficulty with this question is to get rid of our paper 
money without disturbing the financial condition of the 
country. That is a serious question. It requires the at- 
tention and study of the best, the most careful, and most 
thoughtful financiers; but that we ought to do it in such 
a way and as rapidly as possible, without disturbing the 
financial conditions and deaHng a serious blow to business, I 
have not the least doubt. 

This road of Government paper issues can lead only to 
disaster in the end, and the worst feature about this bill 
is that it goes on adding, adding, forever adding, to the 
volume of our paper money. 



196 Orville H. Piatt 

As the conventions of 1896 approached, Mr. Piatt 
became greatly concerned about the currency plank 
of the Republican platform. The nomination of Mr. 
McKinley was assured several weeks before the meeting 
of the Convention at St. Louis, and those who had his 
fortunes in charge were arranging already the declara- 
tion of principles upon which he was to go before the 
people. Mark Hanna was determined that the issue 
of the campaign should be the tariff ; for he felt that his 
candidate would make his strongest appeal as "the 
advance agent of prosperity," just as he had already 
won his way in the Republican primaries in that char- 
acter. Both Hanna and McKinley thought it would 
be good politics to minimize the currency question so 
that the Western Republican adherents of the cause of 
free silver might not be driven to new party alignments. 
The Eastern leaders, most of whom had been supporters 
of Speaker Reed, were determined, on the other hand, 
that there should be no evasion of the currency issue, 
and that the party should place itself squarely on a 
platform declaring for the maintenance of the gold 
standard. It fell to the delegations from New England 
and New York to make this fight, and Mr. Piatt, al- 
though not a delegate to the Convention, exerted his 
influence in behalf of an unequivocal declaration. 
On June nth, he wrote emphatically to Samuel 
Fessenden : 

We who represent States like Connecticut here in Wash- 
ington feel very nervous and anxious with reference to 
what the platform shall be in St. Louis. There is nothing 
that I can urge upon you, and yet I feel as if I must say 
something. Here in Washington, where we are supposed 
to catch public sentiment, there is a feeling that the dele- 
gates who will apparently nominate McKinley will want 



Paper Money 197 

to tone down the platform so that it may not be entirely- 
unacceptable to the free-coinage delegates. I cannot help 
feeling that a platform which can possibly be interpreted 
as favorable to silver would be disastrous. As it looks 
to me now, we have got to fight in the next campaign 
Democrats, Populists and the bolting silver Republicans, 
and we ought to make the money issue plain and distinct 
and unequivocal. If we can't win on such a platform, let 
us go down. We can at least lay the foundation for the 
party of the future, and I believe that we can carry more 
States on a square sound money platform than we can on 
one which can even be claimed to be equivocal. If we have 
an equivocal platform or one which any considerable 
number of people say is equivocal, we shall get no Demo- 
cratic sound-money votes. If we have a square, honest 
declaration against free coinage and for the maintenance 
of the existing standard, we shall carry New York, New 
Jersey, and Connecticut by very large majorities, and I 
believe we can do better even in the States where the silver 
movement is feared by Republicans than we can upon a 
hesitating or evasive platform. I don't know what the 
Committee on Platform is likely to do, but, if it does not 
come up to the mark which we believe it should, I think 
some one in the Convention should make the fight. And 
looking the Convention over, I don't see but three men in 
the Convention who can make it. There may be others, 
but it seems to me that the fight will have to be made on 
the floor of the Convention by Warner Miller, Mr. Lodge, 
and yourself. 

I hope you won't think that I am unduly frightened or 
exercised, but what I have heard in Washington the last 
few days has induced me to fear very much that our 
success may be imperilled by an attempt to placate the 
free-coinage Repubhcans. 

The issue was joined at St. Louis under the leadershio 
of Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, and Thomas C. 



198 Orville H. Piatt 

Piatt of New York. Mr. Hanna, greatly against his 
will, was induced to put in the platform a straight out 
declaration for gold, on a threat that otherwise the 
fight would be carried to the floor of the convention. 
The subsequent campaign was conducted almost solely 
on the money issue, after a futile attempt to force the 
tariff to the front. Free silver was overwhelmingly 
beaten, and the way was clear for the formal legislative 
endorsement of the gold standard, which came at last 
with the Law of July, 1900. 



CHAPTER XVI 

REAL CURRENCY REFORM 

The Finance Committee — Helps to Frame Law of 1900 — Letter to 
Timothy Dwight — Consideration of Additional Measures of 
Relief — Opposed to Asset Currency — The Aldrich Bill — Con- 
ference at Warwick — A Central Bank. 

COINCIDENT with the election of President Mc- 
Kinley the currency question assumed a new 
phase. Hitherto the advocates of a debased coinage 
had been in the aggressive, while the friends of a stable 
currency had as a rule contented themselves with 
resisting the encroachments of unsound finance. Now 
the tables were about to be turned. In the winter 
succeeding Mr. McKinley's election a group of business 
men, financial students and economists, entered upon a 
systematic campaign with a view to securing legislation 
which would insure the maintenance of the gold stand- 
ard, the ultimate retirement of all classes of United 
States notes, and a banking system which should furnish 
credit facilities to every portion of the country with 
a safe and elastic circulation. Hugh H. Hanna of 
Indianapolis was the intelligent organizer who brought 
the scattered elements together, resulting in the 
Indianapolis Convention of January, 1897, and the 
Monetary Commission convened in Washington the 
following autumn. The general movement of which 
the Indianapolis Convention and the Monetary Com- 

199 



200 Orville H. Piatt 

mission were conspicuous manifestations resulted in 
the enactment of the Law of March 14, 1900, and in an 
education of the pubhc along the lines of sane finance, 
undoubtedly wholesome in effect , although accom panied , 
as was inevitable, by quixotic suggestions and unreason- 
ing insistence on ideal schemes, impracticable in face 
of the necessity for legislative compromise. 

Mr. Piatt while sympathizing with the general move- 
ment, did not allow himself to be carried away by 
enthusiasm for any particular remedy. "I am not 
sure whether I can support the proposition for a mone- 
tary commission," he wrote on March lyth, 1897: 

Ever since I have been in the Senate, especially since 
the Tariff Commission of 1882, I have had very decided 
views as to the impolicy of commissions appointed outside 
of Congress to formulate legislation on given subjects, and 
have frequently taken occasion to express myself in the 
Senate on that subject. While entirely in sympathy with 
the advocates of a reformed currency system, I doubt 
very much whether anything is to be gained by a monetary 
commission. If we make commissions for one purpose to 
advise Congress what to do, we cannot discriminate and 
must grant them whenever there seems to be an earnest 
demand for them. It amounts purely to delegating the 
power of Congress to investigate and formulate legislation 
to that class of our citizens who desire the legislation. 
And while that might work well in case of a monetary 
commission, it will work very badly in the end, in my 
judgment, if that is understood to be the pohcy of Congress. 
... If we begin with commissions we shall very soon 
farm out legislation into the hands practically of men who 
want to secure it. Saying this, I do not conclusively say 
that I cannot favor a monetary commission, but such action 
is against all previously formed convictions. 

He was then a member of the Finance Committee, and 



Real Currency Reform 201 

was in constant touch with Mr. Aldrich in the considera- 
tion of all measures affecting the currency. During 
the summer of 1899, preceding the meeting of the 
Fifty-sixth Congress, there were conferences of members 
of the Finance Committee at Narragansett Pier and 
Manhattan Beach. President McKinley in his annual 
message impressed upon Congress the necessity of 
enacting a law to insure the maintenance of the gold 
standard. The Act of March 14, 1900, embodying 
explicit recognition of the gold standard, was the result 
of the endeavors of the Senate and House to come 
together. It was a long step in advance of previous 
legislation, but it was not by any means the ideal scheme 
which currency reformers had in mind ; nor did it fully 
satisfy any of the men who were entrusted with the 
task of framing the law. Mr. Piatt, as a member of 
the subcommittee of the Finance Committee, had a 
great deal to do with getting the bill into shape. He 
joined in the debate with the free-silver senators who 
opposed it and was engaged with Mr. Aldrich and Mr. ( 
Allison in bringing about an agreement in conference. 
He did not speak at length but in the course of the 
discussion he made it clear that he believed the United 
States could take no step more likely to advance the 
cause of international bimetallism than to let it be 
understood to the world that until we could secure the 
concurrence of other nations we were going to maintain 
the gold standard. 

No sooner was the Law^ of 1900 enacted than ad- 
vocates of reform began to pelt the men responsible 
for it with demands for legislation still further ad- 
vanced. Mr. Hanna representing the monetary con- 
ference had two purposes: the interchangeability of 
all forms of currency and bank circulation based on 



202 Orville H. Piatt 

assets. As a member of the Finance Committee Mr. 
Piatt received numerous letters urging his co-operation 
in these projects. But he was not inclined to hurry. He 
thought the Law of 1900 a much better measure than 
its critics would make out; "not that it is perfect, but 
it is easier to lament imperfections than it is to over- 
come them." To one correspondent he replied with a 
suggestion of mild reproof : 

I wish people would believe that those who are respon- 
sible for legislation are as anxious to get things right as 
they are, but perhaps see more of the difficulties to be 
overcome. 

The venerable Timothy Dwight of New Haven wrote 
him expressing the earnest hope that the P'inance Com- 
mittee would finally settle the currency question during 
the session so that there should be no further possibility 
of question or danger as to the permanent establishment 
of the gold standard. He also inquired whether the 
time was not ripe to adopt the measures which the 
Indianapolis Committee was urging. For Dr. Dwight's 
opinion Mr. Piatt, a friend of many years, had a pro- 
found respect, and in reply he was at considerable pains 
to make clear his own position: 

I assure you that I wish to do everything that may be 
necessary in order to prevent the possibility of the gold 
standard from being interfered with. The suggested 
legislation, however, presents many other serious questions 
that need the most careful consideration. I have not time 
for a long discussion of the subject, but right in the be- 
ginning of it are two matters to which I will allude. 

The present law provides for the redemption in gold 
of about $430,000,000 of Government paper, greenbacks, 
treasury notes, etc. For this redemption we thought it 



Real Currency Reform 203 

necessary to provide for the establishment and main- 
tenance at all times of a reserve fund of $150,000,000 in 
gold. That is a large sum to lock up in the Treasury- 
department. If a law is to be passed that makes all our 
money redeemable in gold, it will add to the volume of 
money to be redeemed enough of silver to bring it up to 
more than a thousand millions. If $150,000,000 was 
necessary to provide a safe redemption fund for $430,000,- 
000 of paper, I cannot see why $300,000,000 would not 
be necessary as a fund to redeem a larger amount, and to 
shut that amount up in the Treasury, never to be used 
except for redemption purposes, would involve: 

First, I think the necessity of selling more bonds to 
provide for it ; and 

Second, a withdrawal of an amount from circulation 
which might make serious trouble. I know it is said that 
it would be necessary to increase the redemption fund; 
that when it was once provided by law that redemption 
of the silver currency would be made in gold, nobody 
would want to redeem; but that argument is very much 
along the line of the greenbackers, that it is the Government 
fiat which gives value to currency. 

The second matter to which I allude is the claim that 
the Government should provide that all public and private 
debts should be payable in gold. In other words, that 
it should declare primarily that our bonds, which on the 
face of them are payable in coin, should be payable in 
gold only, and that all obHgations of the Government, 
and of private individuals should be thus payable. The 
House bill which came over to the Senate contained this 
provision, and it also contained the provision that the 
present legal-tender quality of the silver dollar should 
continue. I do not see how it is practicable to provide 
that all obligations of the Government should be payable 
in gold, and still keep the legal-tender quality of the silver 
dollar, and there is certainly an inconsistency in saying 
that silver shall be a legal tender to pay obHgations to 



204 Orville H. Piatt 

the Government, while the Government shall pay all its 
obligations in gold. 

I only allude to these two matters to show that it is 
much easier to say that there should be further legislation 
for the security of the gold standard, than to determine 
just what form that legislation should take. There are a 
great many other matters connected with our system and 
its practical operation which furnish difficulties to be 
thought of when further legislation is proposed. Our cur- 
rency is pretty safe now in the hands of officers who wish 
to maintain the gold standard. No law that could be 
passed would make it safe if there should be a poHtical 
change which put the Government in the hands of those 
who desire to destroy the gold standard. I cannot think 
that with all the delicate and difficult problems to be solved 
by further legislation, it is wise to be in haste about it. 

In other letters he went into greater detail. It 
seemed to him that the declaring of our different kinds 
of currency to be exchangeable would hardly do away 
with the necessity for a gold reserve. Simply calling 
silver money gold, or as good as gold, would not make it 
so. Our money other than gold would be greenbacks, 
treasury notes, silver dollars, and silver certificates, and 
they would have the value of gold simply because what 
is gold in the treasury could be exchanged for them. 
It was true that the people did not want their money 
if they were sure that they could get it, but it was this 
very fact which made it necessary to provide what 
Tilden used to call ' ' a central reservoir of gold ' ' : 

There is not and there will not be as long as present 
conditions endure, any practical difficulty. The country 
can carry this paper because it provides a sufficient fund 
for the redemption of all but the silver currency; and, as 
to the silver currency, it takes it in payment of debts due 
to it, and the volume is so limited that it is thus practically 



Real Currency Reform 205 

exchangeable for gold. . . . We have more gold in this 
country now than any other country in the world, and 
more in our Treasury than any other nation has in its 
treasury. It will be a question before long what we are 
going to do with it, and I hope that, as the situation begins 
to emphasize itself to the apprehension of the people, a 
disposition to retire all our paper currency will make 
headway; I mean all paper that is not issued upon the 
deposit of an equal amount of gold; in other words, gold 
certificates. I think the whole idea of paper currency 
issued by the Government upon any other basis is vicious, 
and must eventually make trouble. And yet, the popular 
business sentiment is now entirely against the retirement 
of our paper currency. As a practical measure, the green- 
backs cannot be retired without either substituting some- 
thing else for them or contracting our currency to the 
extent of their retirement. A radical contraction of currency 
would plunge us into all sorts of financial trouble; that is 
the objection to taking in greenbacks and keeping them 
except when someone wants them in exchange for gold. 
One of the things that has made business good and keeps 
it good is the fact that there was a little bit of expansion 
of the currency in our last financial bill, not to the extent 
of real inflation, but an expansion which kept pace with 
the demand of business. I do not think that people have 
generally thought of that. A simple declaration of the 
gold standard, without providing this means for an ex- 
panded currency mostly through the national banks, would 
scarcely have kept things as satisfactory as they have been 
kept. This is a pretty wide question, and it is hke other 
great questions in that every one can agree on the purpose 
to be accomplished, while they cannot agree on the details. 
It is easy to say of the shipping bill that it is a measure 
calculated to restore our merchant marine and, from that 
standpoint, every one wants it; but when you come to the 
question of how it is to be done, the best of people are in 
doubt. It is just so with the money question. Everyone 



2o6 Orville H. Piatt 

agrees that we should do everything in our power to main- 
tain the gold standard, but when you come to consider 
the special steps by which this is to be accomplished, 
people may well be puzzled. 

In spite of the pressure from business interests 
nothing tangible was done for over two years. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt in his message of December, 1902, 
suggested the desirability of additional measures 

with the view of encouraging the use of such instrumen- 
talities as will automatically supply every legitimate de- 
mand of productive industries and of commerce, not only 
in the amount, but in the character, of circulation, and of 
making all kinds of money interchangeable and, at the will 
of the holder, convertible into the established gold standard. 

After waiting sufficiently long upon the initiative 
of the House, Mr. Aldrich, early in February, 1903, 
less than a month before the adjournment of Con- 
gress, introduced and reported from the Finance 
Committee a bill which if enacted would have relieved 
the situation to some extent. It authorized the 
Secretary of the Treasury to deposit in the national 
banks public money received from all sources, including 
customs, and to accept as security certain state and 
municipal bonds as well as United States bonds, the 
banks to pay not less than one and one-half per cent, 
interest on government deposits. It also gave to 
Panama bonds all rights and privileges of two per 
cent, consols deposited as security for circulation, and 
authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to retain in 
the general fund national bank-notes received in the 
ordinary course of business and pay them out in 
current expenditures of the Government. 

Consideration of this bill was prevented by wanton 



Real Currency Reform 207 

obstruction, but it served as a text for subsequent 
discussion and contained the substance of future legis- 
lation. After the adjournment of the Fifty-seventh 
Congress in the spring of 1903, the Senate leaders felt 
that the time had arrived for an understanding if 
possible in regard to a measure to be enacted during 
the approaching long session of the Fifty-eighth Con- 
gress. A conference of Republican members of the 
Finance Committee was called to meet at Hot Springs- 
Virginia, in May. Mr. Piatt was ill with an attack of 
acute indigestion and could not attend. Another 
meeting was held at Senator Aldrich's home at Warwick, 
Rhode Island, in the first week in August. Those 
invited to attend it were Senators Allison, Spooner, and 
Piatt. Mr. Piatt felt that the outlook for intelligent 
legislation was anything but clear. Personally he 
believed in the establishment of a Central National 
Bank as a sound financial programme, but he feared that 
the time was not ripe for proposing such a measure to 
the country. Writing to John H. Flagg, of New York, 
on July 29, 1903, he said: 

On the 6th of August I go down to Aldrich's as one of 
a subcommittee to consider financial matters. Sometimes 
I think it is almost a farce that I should be taking part in 
proposed legislation affecting our financial system, and at 
other times I think perhaps I know fully as much about 
it as those who are better financiers. This present con- 
dition seems to be one of deciding where doctors disagree. 
I find the people who think themselves financial experts 
have many different schemes, and each thinks his own 
scheme is the only way possible out of what I think is 
universally admitted to be a defective governmental 
system. I doubt if any of them point the way out. I 
agree that, if there were some way of making a more elastic 



2o8 Orville H. Piatt 

currency without running the risk of depreciating its 
security, it would be a good thing to do, but I doubt very 
much whether issuing an emergency circulation, secured 
only by the assets of a bank and taxation, would be a real 
remedy for the defects which exist, or indeed, would serve 
to make a more elastic currency, while on the other hand, 
it is possible that it would be the first step towards what, 
in old times, was called "wild cat banking," a situation 
which was met by requiring that when banks issued circu- 
lation, there should be undoubted security behind it. I 
do not know. I am all at sea about the matter, and my 
only consolation in that respect is that I think others are 
as much afloat as I am, though they do not seem to know it. 
A greater trouble to my mind than the want of an elastic 
currency is that, so long as our receipts exceed our ex- 
penditures, actual money must be locked up in the vaults 
of the sub-treasury. If we, in this country, could have a 
national bank, or a governmental connection with a strong 
bank, as in England, France, Germany, and other commer- 
cial countries, and thus do away with the sub-treasury, I 
think we would be better off, but that is impossible, in 
view of public sentiment. It is strange how ideas developed 
by a particular situation which occurred years, and even 
a century ago, dominate public sentiment now. The na- 
tional bank idea was sound finance, but its experience made 
every one opposed to a national bank, and you have only 
to mention one now to stir up the whole community to 
hostiHty. It is just another instance of ideas which fitted 
one set of circumstances controlling another and entirely 
different set in after-times, like the Alien and Sedition laws, 
which became so unpopular as the result of political party 
contention, that now any attempt to punish even the 
utterances of anarchy is howled down by a shout about re- 
turning to the old Alien and Sedition laws. Any attempt 
to have a decent army is met by the old cry, first raised 
in the time of our Revolution, as the result of hatred of 
the British, that a standing army is a menace to our lib- 




I 
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I- i 

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O z 



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Real Currency Reform 209 

erties. But, however all this may be, it is manifest that 
we cannot revive the idea of a national bank. The re- 
duction of taxation, even to the extent of making it neces- 
sary to use some of our surplus, is, in my judgment, the real 
remedy for money stringency, but that is difficult of accom- 
plishment, and when we do reduce taxation to what we 
suppose is the level of expenditure, it turns out that we 
have still a surplus of moneys that we cannot use, which 
must go either into the sub-treasury or be deposited in 
banks. 

If we are to have bad times our receipts will fall off, and 
there will be no trouble about the locking up of money, 
but the banks which have received deposits of government 
money seem to think that the Government must not call 
on them, for repayment, and so we are in danger of the 
deposit in banks becoming permanent. I confess I do not 
know what to do. I should like to do something to relieve 
the situation. If this Wall Street experience is the be- 
ginning of bad times in business, no one knows what the 
result of the next Presidential election will be. You see 
it is a serious problem. 

The conference at Warwick went into the subject 
of currency legislation with great thoroughness, but, 
in view of the conflicting opinions of the advocates 
of a reformed system, there was little expectation of 
affirmative action by Congress. It was understood 
that Congress was to meet in extraordinary session to 
take up the question of Cuban reciprocity, and this 
ought to give time for consideration of financial pro- 
blems, but Mr. Piatt did not feel much encouraged 
regarding legislation. Writing to Mr. Flagg on 
September 14, 1903, he said: 

It looks to me as if the House would not pass any bill 
whatever. Fowler, at the head of the Banking and Cur- 
rency Committee, has evolved a scheme, consisting of three 

14 



2IO Orville H. Piatt 

propositions: (i) Retirement of the greenbacks ; (2) payment 
by banks of two per cent, interest on government deposits; 
(3) asset currency. I do not believe that the RepubHcans 
of the House will adopt his ideas. I do not think his plan 
has many advocates in banking or financial circles. I need 
not go into lengthy argument to show why I do not think 
it a wise or safe scheme. I merely say that I shall be sur- 
prised if it meets with favor in the House. The Secretary 
of the Treasury has a cure-all, in a plan to allow national 
banks to issue emergency currency up to fifty per cent. 
of their circulation, secured by a six per cent, tax and a 
lien on assets. I think that would be a dead failure. I 
do not believe banks would take out that currency. It 
has many and fatal defects, in my judgment, even if they 
would. We shall probably propose the Aldrich bill with 
modifications. . . . Probably we could pass such a bill 
in the Senate after the Democrats are through trying to 
formulate an issue for the Presidential campaign, but the 
necessity for an additional supply of money to move the 
crops will have gone by long before we could get it to a 
vote. The Democratic Presidential campaign is of course 
to be conducted upon the theory that the Republicans 
favor the great moneyed interests of the country at the 
expense of those who are poor or have only moderate 
capital, and any effort which is intended to relieve the 
monetary condition will be said by them to be a part 
of our general plan to build up the millionaires and im- 
poverish every one else, so that, though we may pass such 
a bill as we shall probably propose, it will come too late to 
be of service this fall, and then, if, as I surmise, the House 
passes nothing, that will be the end of it. If the House 
should pass some kind of a bill, we might, in conference, 
get some items of minor importance, which we could agree 
upon. If we could get the main features of the Aldrich 
bill passed by Congress quickly, I am sure that it would 
obviate any money stringency this fall, but this I do not 
look for. The Fowler plan and all others which involve 



Real Currency Reform 211 

asset currency, taxable or untaxable, look to the complete 
change of our currency system, and it seems to me that it 
would be folly to attempt such a change by legislation in 
this Congress, on the eve of a presidential election. We 
have a safe currency now. It is also an abundant currency 
for the ordinary conditions of business. If we had the 
two additional features, permitting deposit of all receipts 
in banks, without interest, and the right of the Secretary 
of the Treasury, in his discretion, during times of stringency, 
to waive redemption by national banks of their notes, 
using them in the current business of the Treasury, the same 
as greenbacks are used, while the emergency lasted, we 
would have no trouble, but you can see as well as I the 
difficulty in reaching any such conclusion as this. I 
should not be surprised to see the session go by without 
any definite legislation. I hope that something may be 
evolved along the lines I have suggested, but my hope is 
not very strong. ' 

Mr. Piatt's doubts were justified. The President 
recommended the passage of a bill authorizing the 
deposit of customs receipts in national banks — a mild 
measure enough — but the Congress went by without 
action of any kind, owing to the impractical attitude of 
the members of the Banking and Currency Committee 
in the House, and the Senator never had another 
opportunity to participate in financial legislation. 



CHAPTER XVII 



A STAUNCH PROTECTIONIST 



The Cleveland Message of 1887 — Attack upon the Administration 
Policy — A Comprehensive Plea for Protection — Defender of 
American Industries — Opposition to the Mills Bill — Contrast 
between Labor and Industry North and South — The Duty on 
Tin Plate — The Tariff not Responsible for the Trusts. 

PROTECTION to American industries was one of 
the cardinal tenets of Mr. Piatt's political creed, 
and this must constantly be borne in mind when con- 
sidering his course in legislation. No measure which 
even remotely threatened to weaken the protective 
system received his support unless on careful considera- 
tion he concluded that some greater end could be 
advanced by its enactment. His career in the Senate 
embraced a period during which four measures were 
formulated there involving a general revision of the 
tariff, and several abortive attempts at tariff legislation 
were made in the House. 

The tariff of 1883 claimed his attention because he 
was the representative of a great manufacturing State, 
and because for that reason, if for no other, he would 
have been expected to see that manufacturing interests 
did not suffer at the hands of Congress. But he was 
comparatively young in the service then, and it does 
not appear from the records that he took any conspicu- 
ous part in the deliberations of the Senate. He had no 
patience with the theories of tariff reform which about 

212 



A Staunch Protectionist 21 



o 



that time agitated American politics, but there was no 
occasion for exploiting himself in debate and he con- 
fined his activities to looking after the interest of the 
industries upon which his State so greatly depended. 

The revision of 1883 was preliminary to a general 
agitation of the whole tariff question to which the 
campaign of 1884 contributed, and which was stimulated 
by William R. Morrison and the " Horizontal " bill with 
which for a time he beguiled the Democratic House of 
Representatives. But the discussion might have con- 
tinued for years to have little except academic interest 
had it not been for President Cleveland who in the 
middle of his first term precipitated the issue in his 
annual message of December, 1887. The question then 
became in a flash the most vital issue before the Ameri- 
can people, and it remained so until the enactment of 
the Dingleylawin 18^7 brought industrial contentment 
after a long period of political and economic unrest. 

The message of 1887 seemed to Mr. Piatt what it 
seemed to many others, — a wanton attack upon a 
hitherto accepted American policy, entered upon with 
no reason then apparent, except the plain political 
reason of furnishing an issue upon which the party 
then in power could go to the country in the hope of 
continuing its predominance. 

During the winter of 1887-8, it served as a text for a 
general tariff debate, introducing a controversy which 
kept the industries of the United States in a turmoil for 
years. Mr. Piatt by this time had become one of the 
recognized authorities in the Senate on industrial and 
economic questions, and this was a subject upon which 
he had deep rooted convictions. The lines were form- 
ing for the contest which was to come in 1888 and which 
he hoped would bring Connecticut back to the Repub- 



214 Orville H. Piatt 

lican ranks. He could hardly have kept silence if he 
had wished to, and he contributed to the debate a 
jspeech which occupied in delivery a part of two days, 
/February 6th and 7th. It was the most comprehensive 
■argument on the tariff question which he ever under- 
took, for although in later years he came to have a 
commanding influence in the shaping of tariff legisla- 
tion he left to others the discussion of principles in- 
volved. It was an orthodox plea for protection which 
exhibited familiarity with the discussion preceding it 
and with the general literature of the subject, as well 
as with the statistics of the industries likely to be 
affected by a revision of the tariff. It attracted the 
attention of the country and served as a text for count- 
less other arguments. 

With the straightforwardness which was character- 
istic of all his poHtical utterances he put the question 
bluntly: " Is the President of the United States a free 
trader? " And letting his argument develop from that 
inquiry, he carried it on to a far-reaching defence of 
the doctrine of protection: 

I do not propose to be deterred from asking, and if I can, 
from answering this question, because the President sug- 
gests that "to dwell upon the theories of protection and 
free trade savors too much of bandying epithets. " I am a 
protectionist and I consider it no epithet when I am called 
so. If the President of the United States is a free trader 
he ought to be willing to be called so and not consider it 
an epithet if that word is used to define his position. 

The immediate timehness of the speech did not 
exclude many truths which were of permanent applica- 
tion, as applicable to the discussion to-day as they 
were twenty years ago : 



A Staunch Protectionist 215 

Are the manufacturers of this country realizing "im- 
mense profits"? Are they the millionaires of the land? 
You can count upon your fingers and thumbs and without 
counting them many times over, all the manufacturers of 
this country who in manufacturing have accumulated a 
fortune equal to a million dollars, and in nine cases out 
of ten either these men or their fathers have struggled from 
the bottom, where poverty pinched the hardest and where 
privation was the greatest, up to their success. They have 
been workmen at the bench, at the loom, in the factory, in 
the shop, in the mill, and what they have they have obtained 
in a manner which the common judgment of mankind says 
is honest and fair. There is not a laboring man in this 
country who when he comes to think of it levels his claim 
that men are obtaining the rewards of investment without 
the rendition of a fair equivalent therefor against the manu- 
facturer. No — they are not the milHonaires. Who ever 
heard a manufacturer called a "king"? We hear of 
"cattle kings," and "wheat kings," and "iron kings"— but 
you never hear that word applied to a manufacturer. _ 
> — k-^):(^ ^ -J ^^^ 

/' He warned the men who were seeking to destroy the 
protective tariff that they must not delude themselves 
with the idea that they were aiming their blows against 
New England: 

The New England manufacturer is the man who has 
least interest of all classes of men in the preservation of 
the protective system. He is interested in it, indeed, but 
others, and all others are interested more. If I were to 
name the order in which the different classes are interested 
in the maintenance of a protective tariff, I would say first 
the laborers everywhere, in whatever field they wipe the 
sweat from their brows; more than any manufacturers 
are the wage-receiving men of this country interested in 
its preservation. The blow hits them first and it may as 
well be understood, and they are coming to understand it 



2i6 Orville H. Piatt 

all over the land. First, the men who work in manu- 
factories, the artisans, are hit; next, agriculturists and the 
men who work on farms; next, manufacturers in other 
sections of the country where they are not as well estab- 
lished, and where the industries may indeed be said even 
now to be infant industries; next, those engaged in trans- 
portation; next, those engaged in merchandise; and last, 
and least, if you please — the manufacturers of New England. 
If the policy of free trade is to prevail, if our progress 
is to be arrested and our development hindered, and if 
the inevitable results of it are to follow and we are to have 
disaster and ruin, the first men who will emerge from the 
ruin will be the manufacturers of New England, the first 
who will adjust themselves to the new order of things and 
go on once more as they have in the past, endeavoring to 
build up and develop and make a strong, powerful, glorious 
nation. The interest of the New England manufacturer 
is more that he may have a market in which he can sell 
his goods than anything else. That is what he wants. 
That is where free trade hits him hardest — the surrender 
of our market to the foreigner. 

Then he took up the argument for free raw materials 
which at that time was just beginning to appeal to the 
manufacturers of the East : 

But perhaps as favorite a method of attack upon the 
tariff by the free trader as any is the claim that raw ma- 
terials should be free, and why? Because the free trader 
knows that the protection of raw materials is the keystone 
to the protective arch ; that when you have once ceased to 
protect the production of what are called • raw materials 
in the country, there is no logical ground upon which any 
article can be protected here. If that kind of production 
which employs the greatest percentage of labor in this 
country cannot receive protection, then nothing should 
receive protection; and it is, therefore, that the assault 
upon protection is made upon what are called raw materials. 



A Staunch Protectionist 217 

It is more than that; it is an appeal to the supposed 
selfishness of manufacturers. The manufacturers are told 
— told by the President in his message — that they can 
cheapen the cost of production if they can have free raw 
materials. Sir, the manufacturer who seeks to obtain 
raw materials free and demands a tariff upon his product 
is a selfish man, and selfish almost to the point of criminal- 
ity; and the manufacturers of New England, as a class, 
spurn that bribe. When in the preparation of the bill 
advised by the leading free traders out of Congress in this 
country, the proposition is made to purchase the support 
of New England manufacturers by free wool, by free iron, 
by free coal, I tell you that they mistake the manufacturers 
of Connecticut and the rest of New England. They know 
that this is a system or it is nothing. They know that 
every industry must be protected to thrive and they know 
that protection alone can make us generally prosperous 
as a nation. They are not to be diverted from this issue. 

The only raw materials are those which grow out of the 
earth or those which repose beneath its surface. The mo- 
ment you dig out the iron, and the coal, and the copper, 
and the marble, and the salt, and the clay, that moment 
human labor is added to the natural product, and from 
that moment it is no longer raw material. When you cut 
down the tree and begin to saw it into timber or into 
boards it is no longer raw material. 

When the farmer raises or buys his flock of sheep and pro- 
duces his wool by means of his labor, that is no longer raw 
material. Human labor, the great energizing, civilizing 
force of the world and of humanity, has entered into that 
product. I would not put it too strongly if I were to say 
the soul of man has entered into and transformed that 
natural product. It is no longer raw material. Go into any 
one of the manufacturing estabHshments of this country; 
look at one that I have in my mind in my own State. 
In that factory they take copper in the ingot as it comes 
from the mine into the front door. When it goes out again 



2i8 Orville H. Piatt 

it goes in the shape of copper wire of four one-thousandths 
of an inch in diameter. Into that crude copper ingot has 
passed the highest thought of man ; his brain is in the wire — 
his soul is there. 

In the course of his speech, Mr. Piatt came to the 
question of the surplus which had ostensibly moved 
President Cleveland to his sensational and radical 
recommendation. To the thrifty Connecticut states- 
man the existence of a surplus did not seem to be an 
unmixed evil and, indeed, for those who have become 
familiar with the Treasury statistics of the last ten years 
since the Dingley law went into effect, it is difficult to 
conceive of the consternation into which the compara- 
tively meagre accumulations of 1887 threw those who 
were entrusted with the administration of the Govern- 
ment. He pointed out that the actual accumulation 
in the Treasury on February i, 1888, was only about 
$35,000,000. He asked why this accumulation had 
been permitted if it were such an evil : 

Why has taxation not been reduced — the taxation which 
created from year to year this accumulation? Why has 
the Democratic party in power in that section of Congress 
which originates measures of this character not sent to 
this body some bill looking to the reduction of taxation? 
It stood pledged by its platform, by the professions of its 
leaders on every stump and at every hustings in the United 
States, immediately upon its accession to power to take 
steps for the reduction of the surplus. They misrepresented 
the amount of the surplus in their presidential convention 
of 1884, as I will show; but if there was any one thing 
which they stood pledged to do it was immediately and 
without delay to adopt measures for the reduction of this 
surplus accumulation in the Treasury. . . . 

What reason can be given for this delay in the past, 



A Staunch Protectionist 219 

what reason can be given for this delay to-day, if it be not 
that the accumulation of money in the Treasury and our 
annual surplus income are being used and deliberately used, 
to force Congress into a destruction of the protective 
system of the country? 

He reminded the Senate that in less than three years 
we had a debt falling due of $230,000,000, and asked 
why the administration did not try to anticipate the 
payment of that debt : 

What would be good financiering for a business man if 
he had money on hand which he had no use for, and had a 
debt falling due at a distant date? Would it not be to 
go to this creditor and say: "I have money on hand which 
I have no use for; you have a note against me falling due 
in future; I wish to make some arrangement with you 
whereby I can take up that note now. " Why has not the 
Government done so? It would have made money by 
the transaction. It will make money if it will adopt that 
policy now instead of the policy of allowing the money to 
accumulate in the Treasury and in national banks until the 
debt falls due. , . . Why should the Government insist 
upon this money lying idle in the Treasury rather than 
attempt to anticipate the debt of the Government? If 
one quarter as much time had been spent in attempting 
to devise some fair plan by which an arrangement with the 
creditors of the Government could be made for the antici- 
pation of the debt which should be satisfactory to them 
and profitable to the Government as has been spent in 
conferences to try to devise some scheme for striking down 
the industries of this country, that arrangement could long 
ago have been perfected. 

My experience in life has taught me — and somewhat 
painfully taught me — that it is not a pleasant condition 
to be in, and that it is not good business for a man to be in 
a situation where he has no money in his pocket except 



220 Orville H. Piatt 

that which he must pay out for his daily expenses. That 
man is not very well off financially. What is true of the 
man is true of the United States. The idea of reducing 
so that there shall be no money in the Treasury, depleted 
entirely, run from day to day and hand to mouth, using 
its daily receipts to meet daily expenditures, is a policy 
which is entirely unwarranted by any sound financial 
theory. ... I would expend more. I would have a 
little patriotism instead of so much penuriousness. I would 
have some coast defences. I would not be longer at the 
mercy of foreign powers, at the mercy of England, whose 
system it is sought to engraft upon our repubhcan insti- 
tutions. I would have a navy built as if we intended to 
have a navy, and not in the pottering way in which it has 
been going on under this administration, and I would have 
reasonable appropriations for internal improvements. 

I would have, even if I do not think very much of our 
foreign representation, our diplomats, our ministers, our 
consuls, enabled to represent this country abroad in a re- 
spectable manner, to say the least, and I would pay them 
enough so that they could do so. . . . I would have an 
American policy, and whatever was reasonably calculated 
to extend and develop and foster that American policy 
and give us a foothold amongst the nations and respecta- 
bility everywhere befitting the condition of a free Republic, 
I would spend money for. 

He agreed to the necessity of some reduction, but he 
did not believe in the reduction of taxation on the 
President's plan, which in his opinion would result in 
the destruction of the protective system. He would 
have made the reduction elsewhere than on manufac- 
tured articles : 

Why not reduce by repealing internal-revenue taxation? 
Because the protective system would be left in force in 
this country. War taxes! There is one tax that is abso- 



A Staunch Protectionist 221 

lutely a war tax, and that is the internal-revenue tax. The 
tariflf tax, if it were a tax, existed to some extent before 
the war. . . . The war tax of the country is the internal- 
revenue tax. Why not repeal that or as much of it as is 
necessary to get the required reduction? 

It is a tax upon our productions, be they tobacco or 
com. It is a tax that operates unequally and yet the Presi- 
dent of the United States says directly that no one objects 
to that ; and this great accumulation, this surplus of money, 
must pile up in the Treasury rather than touch the internal- 
revenue tax! How is it that this war tax, about which 
we have heard so much, has all at once become so sacred? 

He asked how manufacturers were to be compensated 
for the loss which the President proposed to inflict on 
them: 

They can get cheap raw materials and then he says they 
can compete with other nations in the markets of the 
world. The poor, pitiful privilege that they are to have to 
save them from ruin is to go away from their own country 
to seek markets in other countries. Foreign trade is de- 
sirable, but it is not worth obtaining at the sacrifice of the 
trade of this country. The trade of this country is the 
marvel of God's own civilization, and to give up any portion 
of it in the hope that we may in some way compensate 
ourselves by getting the markets of the world, as they are 
called, is the height of folly and absurdity. 

Where are the "markets of the world " ? Not in England, 
not in Germany, not in France, not in Belgium or Holland. 
We are not going to sell our goods in England or the other 
countries I have named in competition with the foreign 
manufacturers. Freight and factorage are against us. 
We are not going to sell in lands which England holds by 
the strong power of her army. We are shut up to South 
America ; and if we could get all the trade of South America, 
it would not be 6 per cent, of our home market. I wish 
we had it; but the idea of opening our ports, taking off 



222 Orville H. Piatt 

our tariff duties, letting the foreigner flood our market 
with his goods, and then telHng American manufacturers 
and American laboring men that we can compensate our- 
selves by going into the markets of the world if we can only- 
have reduced duties, it seems to me is idle, and, of all free- 
trade sophistries, is the shallowest. 

His concluding words were : 

Sir, it is too late in the century to belittle the system of 
protection by asserting, as the President and all other free 
traders assert, that it lays a tax upon the consumer paid 
to the manufacturer. It is too late in the century to seek 
to destroy that system by appealing to the disquiet of 
laborers in the hope of arraying them against it because it 
protects alone or primarily the manufacturers and brings 
"immense profits" to their pockets. 

Protection is for the whole of United America; its benefits 
are as extensive as our boundaries; its "immense profits" 
are as widely diffused as our citizenship — it blesses and 
beautifies every home, it helps and strengthens every 
citizen, the importer of foreign wares alone excepted. It 
is the policy of United America in its competition with all 
the world. Under the fostering influence of that system 
America has gained its rightful place in front of the grand 
procession of the nations. And unless we blindly permit 
a Democratic President and a so-called Democratic party 
to destroy this, our sure safe-guard of national success, 
United America will continue to lead the world in the 
grand struggle for human advancement. 

In due season after many hearings, Roger Q. Mills pre- 
sented to the House from the Committee on Ways and 
Means the tariff bill which bore his name. The bill 
occupied the attention of the House for several months. 
It gave William McKinley the opportunity for recog- 
nition as the apostle of protection which ultimately 
made him President, and it gave Thomas B. Reed the 



A Staunch Protectionist 223 

chance for leadership which made him Speaker of the 
House. When it reached the Senate an enervating 
summer had already laid its hand upon the capital. 
The great national conventions were impending, and 
the country was on the threshold of a campaign for the 
Presidency which it was seen must turn in large measure 
upon the issues presented by the Mills bill and the 
Cleveland message. 

The Senate Committee on Finance, which was domi- 
nated by a Republican majority, consisting of Morrill, 
Sherman, Jones of Nevada, Allison, Aldrich, and Hiscock, 
had framed a bill of its own, along protection lines, and 
this was reported to the Senate as a substitute for the 
measure passed by the House. It was known of course 
that no bill could become a law, and the debate which 
followed was purely for effect upon the approaching 
election. The discussion continued until within three 
weeks of the election day. 

There was little for any member of the Senate to do 
except to remain in his place to contribute to a quorum, 
to vote on motions which required a record, and 
occasionally to speak. 

Mr. Piatt contented himself with following the Com- 
mittee on Finance, interposing an occasional question 
during the debate, and voting with due regularity. He 
made only one speech of greater length than a few 
sentences. This was near the close of the session, on 
October 11, 1888. Then he discussed the issue of 
protection from the interesting view-point of the 
development of labor and industry North and South : 

Two systems of labor were established contemporaneously 
in this country. About a year before the Mayflower touched 
the Massachusetts shore, a ship landed at Jamestown, 
Virginia, loaded with slaves. From that time these two 



224 Orville H. Piatt 

labor systems have been antagonistic forces in the country, 
and all our woes .and troubles and conflicts have been 
occasioned by the "irrepressible conflict" between these 
two labor systems. One system involved the idea that 
labor should be unpaid and ignorant. At first it involved 
the idea that capital should own the laborer, but always 
to this day the idea that labor shall be poorly paid and 
ignorant. The other system involved the idea that labor 
should be well paid and should be intelligent. 

The Southern system, if I may so call it without disrespect, 
was based upon the idea that the laborer should have no 
status in society, that he should have no political rights, 
no civil rights, no "inalienable rights." The other was 
based upon the idea that the laborer should have an equal 
status in society with every other man; that he should 
have poHtical rights and civil rights; that he should be 
one of the citizens of the Government, responsible for its 
administration and responsible for its progress; that he 
should be in the broadest sense a freeman. The Southern 
system where che laborer was unpaid, where he was kept 
ignorant, where it was a criminal offence to teach him to 
read even the Scriptures, was adapted only to the rudest 
cultivation of the soil. The Northern system, where the 
laborer was well paid and intelligent and free to engage in 
the "pursuit of happiness," inevitably tended to the 
diversification of industries. 

These two labor systems determined where manufac- 
tories should first be planted in the United States. It was 
not the enterprise of capitaHsts; it was solely and purely 
the character of labor which spread over these different 
sections of the United States which determined where 
manufacturing should spring up and flourish. The New 
England States, where this labor system was first planted, 
could but attempt to engage in manufacturing. The 
Southern States, where the ignorant and unpaid systems of 
labor prevailed, could only engage in the raising of cotton, 
sugar, tobacco, and like agricultural products. Skill, 



A Staunch Protectionist 225 

education, and aspiration in the laborer not only make 
agriculture profitable, but are absolutely essential to even 
the rudimentary development of mechanical industries. 

To have supposed that manufacturing could at that 
day have found a foothold in the Southern section of this 
country was to suppose that you could reverse a universal 
law of political economy. 

In the second session of the Fiftieth Congress, after 
the defeat of Cleveland by Harrison, the Senate con- 
tinued to debate the tariff bill which v^^as still on the 
calendar; and to this useless debate Mr. Piatt contri- 
buted occasional remarks. One brief speech which he 
made on the proposal to impose a duty on tin-plate is 
interesting by reason of the success which finally re- 
sulted from the imposition of the tin-plate duty: 

I want to vote for every duty which will establish a new 
industry in this country — that is to say, an industry which 
under any circumstances it can be supposed can be profit- 
ably carried on in this country. If employment can be 
found for 70,000 additional workmen in this country in 
the manufacture of the whole or a large portion of these 
283,000 tons of tin-plate which we now pay our money to 
England for, I want that opportunity for the employment 
of labor to be satisfied ; and I do not believe that this duty 
is going to result in any great increase of the price of tin- 
plate; I think it very doubtful whether it results in any, 
if the usual course pursued by foreign manufacturers is 
adopted by them. When they see there is a probability 
that tin-plate factories will be established in this country, 
they will put down the price quite equal to the amount 
that is added to the duty; and even if the price is tem- 
porarily raised, all the experience of this country shows 
that it will immediately fall to or below its present price. 

On another occasion he considered briefly the relation 
of the tariff to the trusts: 

IS 



226 Orville H. Piatt 

As it appears to me, the question of trusts has nothing 
whatever to do with the question of duties. It seems to me 
that the righteous indignation which exists at a great 
many trusts in this country (against all trusts that have 
the features which make them obnoxious) is made use of 
to attack the tariff. 

Trusts are not indigenous to the United States. The 
worst trusts are to be found abroad, and many of them 
in England, where there is no tariff. There is not a worse 
trust for the United States than the copper trust which 
exists in France. There is no trust which is bearing upon 
our people more unfavorably, more injuriously, and the 
tariff has nothing to do with that; the rate of duty has 
nothing to do with that. 

I merely rose to say that while I join in the indignation 
against those combinations which put up the price of 
necessaries of life, which put up the price of articles that 
enter into general use, I do protest against this continued 
reiteration in the Senate that they are the result in some 
way of protective duties. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE FATEFUL FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS 

McKinley Tariff and the Lodge Elections Bill — Democratic Obstruc- 
tion in the Senate — An Unswerving Supporter of the Party- 
Programme — Argues for Enactment of Both Bills — The Quay 
Resolution — Enactment of the Tariff Bill — The Election Bill 
Postponed — Lukewarm towards Blaine's Reciprocity Pro 
posal — Unchanged by Republican Defeat. 

ON the assembling of the Fifty-first Congress in De- 
cember, 1889, the RepubHcan party, controlling 
both legislative and executive branches of the Govern- 
ment, for the first time in years found itself in a position 
to undertake constructive legislation. First among the 
measures to which the party had pledged itself was a 
revision of the tariff along the lines of protection, next 
the enactment of a law to insure the integrity and purity 
of Federal elections. In order to fulfil either of these 
promises or to do other essential things it was necessary 
first to revise the rules of the House so as to give the 
majority a chance to do business, as the Democratic 
minority, lacking only a few votes of control, made no 
concealment of its purpose to prevent, by obstructive 
parliamentary tactics, the enactment of all measures 
which they did not like. Speaker Reed by heroic 
measures early in the session effected the change of 
rules which won for him the title of "Czar" and thus 
placed the House in a position to carry out its part of 
the political programme. The McKinley Tariff bill and 

227 



228 Orville H. Piatt 

the Lodge Elections bill, taking their names from the 
chairmen of the committees which reported them, were 
promptly passed and sent to the Senate. There the 
two measures, possessing nothing in common except 
the stamp of party regularity, were to run along for 
months, impeding one another's progress and each 
threatening the other's chances. 

On April 24, 1890, Senator Hoar from the Committee 
on Privileges and Elections reported the Elections bill 
to the Senate. Senator Pugh of Alabama for the 
Democratic minority made a report in which he de- 
clared with emphasis that the passage of the bill would 
be resisted by every method known to parliamentary 
law and to the Constitution. On June i8th. Senator 
Morrill from the Finance Committee reported the Tariff 
bill with amendments, which was in effect a substitute, 
founded on the measure reported as a substitute for the 
Mills bill in 1888. The Finance Committee had the same 
Republican membership as in the preceding Congress. 
Mr. Piatt was not a member, though by long service and 
demonstrated usefulness he was close in the councils 
of Allison and Aldrich, who had most to do with the 
initial steps of shaping tariff legislation 

In the face of threatened Democratic obstruction, 
the Republican majority was concerned chiefly in bring- 
ing the bill to a vote so that it might go into operation 
well in advance of the November elections, and all un- 
necessary speaking in defence of the measure was to 
be discouraged. This was especially agreeable to Mr. 
Piatt who, following his usual practice, took no part in 
the debate except at times when he believed he could 
be of immediate service, and the Congressional Record 
contains no report of any speech from him which would 
occupy more than fifteen minutes in deHvery. He did no 



The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 229 

talking for his constituents; and was interested solely in 
seeing that the bill should be evolved as speedily and in 
as favorable a form as possible. But he was soHcitous 
that the two great political measures of the session 
should become laws, — as much concerned about one as 
about the other, — and for a long time it looked as though 
the Senate would be able to come to a vote on neither. 
After the farce of unlimited debate had been going on 
for several weeks, the country began to call upon the 
Senate to get to work. The press, instead of condemn- 
ing the minority, which was responsible for the delay, 
turned its batteries upon the majority, which was doing 
its very best to bring about a vote, and, coupled with 
this criticism, illogically enough, was a wholesale 
denunciation of the very bills upon which action was 
demanded. Mr. Piatt was kept busy explaining to 
people at home just what the trouble was, and he did 
not mince words in upholding the policy of his party. 
To one correspondent who had written him a com- 
plaining letter he replied : 

I do not suppose the people who are talking in opposition 
to the "McKinley bill " as it is called have any very definite 
idea of the bill as a whole. 

We carried the Presidential election on two issues : The 
one, that we would enact a protective tariff law; and the 
other, that we would endeavor to have honest elections. 
. . . Now what are we going to do — abandon the idea 
of protection to American industries? And are we going 
to abandon our opportunity to secure fair elections? If 
so we need never again talk of protection and honest elec- 
tions. For it will be said that having the three branches 
of the administration and the opportunity to pass laws, 
we deliberately refused to do so. . . . I am a protectionist 
whether in public or in private life ; and I can not abandon 



230 Orville H. Piatt 

my lifelong views on this subject whatever the result may- 
be personally or politically. 

I am sorry to see you speak of the "election bill" as a 
"force bill." There is not an element of force in it from 
the beginning to the end of it. If the Republican party, 
having the opportunity to enact a law, the sole purpose 
of which is to allow people to vote in Congressional elections 
and which contains no element of force, deliberately de- 
clines to do it, how can it ever again complain that the 
nation is governed by a party which exists only by a fraudu- 
lent suppression of votes? And what is the Republican 
party to contend for if it abandons these two issues ? 

With equal frankness he wrote to William C. Miner of 
Madison, Connecticut : 

I don't see how or where you got your idea about "reim- 
bursing interested parties for money advanced to the 
campaign fund of '88 by an increase of taxes." I should 
not suppose that such a fiction was seriously believed 
anywhere. ... I fear that you have been giving too 
much heed to the misrepresentations persistently and 
continuously reiterated in certain newspapers that seem 
to think the country would be better off if its industries 
were crippled here and transferred to other countries. . . . 
Financially, socially, morally, and politically, I believe 
that protection is the best thing for Connecticut, for the 
United States, and for all the people of the United States ; 
and so beUeving I am bound to support it. I believe too 
in allowing people to vote everywhere; and when it is a 
question of the election of members of Congress, where 
a suppression of the vote in any State is a direct and absolute 
wrong to my own State, I believe it is the duty of Congress 
to provide for honest elections everywhere. I don't speak 
of any particular election law. We have a law now, under 
which marshals were appointed at the last Congressional 
election in Meriden, as well as in New Haven, Hartford, 
Waterbury, Bridgeport, and the other large towns. They 



The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 231 

were appointed by Democrats; they didn't hurt me and 
they did n't hurt any one. And I know of no reason why 
such a law should not be extended so that the officers 
appointed in Connecticut to have an oversight of Congres- 
sional elections can be appointed in the States where the 
great wrong on Connecticut is, I believe, perpetrated. As 
to the details of the bill, that is another question. They 
ought to be of uniform apphcation, and so guarded that 
no injustice shall be done. But if we are going to have a 
republican form of government, we must have honest 
elections. 

The leaders of the Senate plodded painfully along 
while the critics were snarling at their heels, until signs 
of restlessness began to show among some of those who 
must be depended on if the party programme was to 
be carried through. A little group of Republicans, most 
of them from far Western States, were hostile to the 
Elections bill, believing it to be a bad political move, 
while others representing great industrial States were 
ready to sacrifice the Elections bill or any other measure 
in order to insure the enactment of a protective tariff 
law. One of these was Quay of Pennsylvania who, 
after the Tariff bill had been two months before the 
Senate, undertook to open a way for its passage by 
offering a resolution fixing the order of business. The 
resolution provided that during the rest of the session 
the Senate would take up for consideration no legislative 
business other than the pending Tariff bill, conference 
reports, appropriation bills, and certain other measures 
among which the Elections bill was conspicuous by its 
absence; the consideration of all bills other than those 
mentioned, to be postponed to the following session and 
a vote on the tariff' to be had on August 30th. While 
the resolution was never acted on, its mere introduc- 



232 Orville H. Piatt 

tion, suggesting an arrangement between the Democrats 
and a few Republicans, was a sufficient indication of 
what was bound to happen. Mr. Piatt, who had been 
urging a change in the rules to fix a limit to debate, took 
this turn of affairs to heart: "The situation here in 
the Senate is exasperating beyond measure," he wrote 
to A. H. Kellam of New Haven, on August i8th, the 
day on which Quay's resolution was introduced : 

It has been perfectly evident that the Democrats have 
been consuming time in debate in every possible way that 
they could devise, short of laying themselves open to the 
charge of wilful obstruction, their object being so to pro- 
long the consideration of measures that the Elections bill 
might not be reached at this session. Since we came to 
the consideration of the Tariff bill I think they have laid 
themselves open in its discussion to the charge of wilful 
obstruction. With no rule in the Senate by which we can 
limit debate, they can discuss the Tariff bill till the first 
day of the next session, and they intend to do it unless we 
will bargain with them not to take up the Elections bill. 
This is the dilemma: How can we avoid it? 

The newspapers say, "Change the rules so as to cut off 
debate." Then the question arises, "Can we change our 
rules?" In answering this it must be understood that 
we have ten majority in the Senate, that a working quorum 
is forty-three, that we have one Senator (Stanford) in 
Europe, two Senators at home sick, and so sick that it is 
questionable whether they could come here, and some 
Senators — variously reckoned at from three to six — who 
are openly opposed to the passage of any elections law and 
who consequently would not consent to a change of rules 
when every one knows that the object of such change is the 
passage of an elections law. Again, we have some Senators 
who don't believe there ought to be any limitation of de- 
bate in the Senate, who at the same time are heartily in 
favor of an elections bill; and others who on a final vote 



The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 233 

would vote for the Elections bill, but doubt its expediency 
so much that they would join with its opponents in opposing 
a change of rules. 

But suppose this difficulty obviated. The question 
then is, can we change the rules? The Democrats would 
then insist on discussing this resolution as they do now the 
Tariff bill, and they can discuss it just as long as the Tariff 
bill unless the presiding officer of the Senate, when the dis- 
cussion had proceeded as long as the Republicans thought 
it ought, should refuse to recognize any one and put the 
question. This would be a direct violation of our present 
rules. It would not be the situation that it was in the 
House on the adoption of rules, for the House had no rules. 
Our rules permit debate ; and to put the question when any 
one desires to speak would be an open violation of them; 
and the presiding officer could not do it successfully unless 
he had a majority of the Senate at his back to sustain him. 
He would then be exercising his arbitrary power in the 
interest of a minority and not of a majority. Can he do 
that and be sustained by even the Republican sentiment 
of the country? 

If then it be conceded that the rules cannot be changed 
any easier than the Tariff bill can be passed (I don't concede 
it, but I think most of the Republican Senators do as a 
practical question), nothing would be gained by dropping 
the Tariff bill and going into a heated contest for a change 
of rules. What then is to be done ? Two courses are open, 
— first, keep at the Tariff bill, fight it out on that Hne if 
it takes till the 4th of March, and throw the responsi- 
bility of obstruction and delay and possible failure to pass 
it, on the Democrats. This is what I think we ought to 
do. But you will observe that no Republican newspaper 
criticises the Democrats or would be likely to. They criti- 
cise the Republican Senators with a sweeping and undis- 
criminating criticism. 

The practical situation leads some Republican Senators 
who honestly favor an election law as well as those who 



234 Orville H. Piatt 

are opposed to one to try to bargain for the passage of the 
Tariff bill, by agreeing to postpone consideration of the 
Elections bill — and that is the secret of the Quay resolution. 
They think that the delay and failure to pass a Tariff bill, 
in working great injury to the business interests of the 
country, creates dissatisfaction and disaffection among 
business men, and that it is better to assume that we can't 
get both and secure the passage of the Tariff bill at any 
sacrifice — even by an agreement with Democrats which 
virtually means the abandonment of the Elections bill, 
I cannot go with them and I will not. I believe if we had 
spunk and persistence we could pass the Tariff bill; then 
we could, if we had votes enough, take up the Elections 
bill and honestly try to pass it. If we failed the responsi- 
bility would not be on the Republicans. My plan would 
involve staying here continuously and honestly trying 
to do those things which the Republican party in the last 
election decided should be done. To purchase the passage 
of the Tariff bill by a bargain with the Democrats which 
involves the abandonment of the Elections bill, I regard 
as a weak and cowardly surrender. 

If the Republicans of Connecticut and the Republican 
newspapers of the State would back up those RepubHcan 
Senators who are trying to carry out the wishes of the 
Republican party, and attack the Democrats, putting the 
responsibility of delay and possible failure on them, the 
situation would not be as embarrassing as it now is. But 
I ask you if you have seen one word of vigorous criticism 
in a Connecticut newspaper on the course of the Democrats? 

Quay's resolution which indicates the bargain will 
probably come up on Tuesday, and I presume has Repub- 
lican votes enough behind it, added to the Democrats, to 
pass it. But I wash my hands clean of it. It will probably 
give us a Tariff bill — but acquired at what a sacrifice! 

The programme of the Quay Republicans prevailed. 
The Elections bill went over, the Tariff bill passed the 



The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 235 

Senate on September 20th, and on October ist became 
a law. The bill as a whole Mr. Piatt regarded as a well 
constructed measure, and he struck powerful blows 
later in its defence, but he had no great fancy for the 
reciprocity provision adopted in response to the senti- 
ment aroused by Mr. Blaine in his letter to Senator Frye, 
flung into the controversy after the bill had passed the 
House. His opinions in later years were somewhat 
modified, and, after all, the reciprocity proposed by 
Mr. Blaine, and limited to the countries of South and 
Central America in its practical working, was quite a 
different thing from the reciprocity of the Dingley bill 
which embraced the commercial nations of the world or 
the reciprocity which ten years later President McKin- 
ley hailed as the handmaid of Protection. It had 
nothing in common with the arrangement with Cuba 
which as a matter of national policy and square dealing 
Senator Piatt during the Roosevelt administration was 
instrumental in bringing about. 

Though he did not oppose reciprocity in the Senate 
he was free in his comments on the newly projected 
issue. ^ 

» To A. H. Kellam, of New Haven, he wrote on July 19, 1890, 
what he called a few "crude and tentative suggestions" on the 
question which was then just beginning to loom on the political 
horizon : 

"I notice in the Hartford Post edited by Porter, a nephew of 
William Walter Phelps, a little article to the effect that the an- 
nouncement of Blaine's views on reciprocity and the tariff is taken 
as an indication that he is a candidate for the Presidency in 1892, 
and if so would be put there by a phenomenal majority, and all 
that sort of thing. 

"So far as I can learn the Blaine pronunciamento seems to have 
excited more interest in Connecticut than anywhere else. All 
this question of reciprocity trades with South America, Cuba, and 
Canada is by no means a new thing Mr. Blaine has no patent 
on it any more than he has on the Pan-American Congress which 



236 Orville H. Piatt 

To Lynde Harrison, of New Haven, for instance, he 
wrote on August 23d: 

I don't know what will be done in the Senate about 
anything looking to what is called "reciprocity" — a very 
taking and very indefinite word. And I am a little afraid 

was strongly recommended by Cleveland, and earlier than that by 
Mr. Frye. If anything is done looking to trades with other coun- 
tries on sugar, it won't take the line of keeping the present duty on 
sugar; and it seems a very queer position for protectionists or free 
traders to take, that they would keep up the high duty on sugar in 
the hope that some time or other we might make a trade with some 
country that produces a little, when the sugar duty is one that is 
not required upon any principle of protection and when taking 
it off is a direct benefit to the people of the United States of fifty 
millions of dollars. 

"To my mind the only way to reach such a reciprocity, or rather 
trade with a sugar-producing country, would be to take the duty oft' 
sugar, and then provide that at a certain time, say July, 1891, or 
January, 1892, it should be restored as against all sugar-producing 
countries that have not in the meantime signified their willingness 
and agreement to take certain things from us free. Then the people 
would get the benefit of free sugar, and we would hold out an induce- 
ment to sugar-producing countries to take some goods free from us. 
In other words, we have the game in our own hands, when if we 
keep the duty on sugar in the hope that we may trade with them, 
they will have the game in their hands. 

"The whole question of trades of this sort is more complicated 
than it appears. In the first place, if a sugar-producing country — 
Brazil or Cuba — has a treaty with foreign countries containing a 
'most favored nations' clause, any agreement they might make 
with us would have to be made with all other countries with whom 
they have such treaties. In the second place there is no telling 
if we should enter upon such a policy, where it would end. The 
parties who want to make sugar trades say that there is no prin- 
ciple involved in it — it is merely a business arrangement. But 
if we begin, for instance, with Brazil on sugar, the demand will 
immediately be made that we shall extend it to wool with the 
countries that produce coarser wools. That you see hits the wool 
producers of the United States, with the probable effect of turning 
them against the protective policy of the country. 

"Again, if we make such trades with reference to sugar and wool, 
why not with reference to tea ? The whole western coast that can 



The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 237 

of it because every Democrat and Free Trader in the coun- 
try is shouting for it and for Blaine. But the real difficulty 
is, first, — to apply it to sugar and not to wool and hides; 
secondly, — to agree on what articles we shall trade for it. 
When the Mexican and Spanish treaties were made it 
turned out that Connecticut got nothing; that is, nothing 

trade with China, perhaps on better ternis than any foreign nation, 
would insist that we should put a duty on tea, if China did not 
agree to take certain American products. 

"Again, what products shall we insist shall be taken free by 
coiin tries from which we want to get goods free? Shall they be 
confined purely to agricultural products? Or shall we go beyond 
that in our demands and include — say, agricultural implements? 
If we include agricultural implements, why not other manufactured 
products — cotton cloth; and if cotton cloth, why not woollen cloths 
and machinery? And if machinery, why not carriages? Where 
is it to end? Would not the producer of articles not included 
in the trade be greatly dissatisfied ? And is not any general policy 
of extending our trade by stipulations with certain countries, that 
we will take certain products of theirs free, if they will take certain 
products of ours free, the beginning of breaking down the protective 
policy of this country ? 

" Now I have said enough to outline some of the difficulties which 
underlie this whole question of reciprocity trades. I mention only 
a few of them. It is a serious question, and one but little under- 
stood. It has a certain fascination about it in the idea that through 
it we may enlarge our trade with foreign countries. I suppose that 
the entire purchases of the Central and South American States and 
Cuba combined, amount to perhaps five hundred millions of dollars. 
We could not expect to get it all; but if we could, it would probably 
equal in round numbers seven per cent, of our home trade. If we 
could get these reciprocity trades with the western nations lying 
south of us it might add to our trade an amount equal to two or 
three per cent, of our home market. 

"The question then comes to this — whether it will be worth what 
it will cost. I have never been quite satisfied on this point. But I 
am clearly satisfied that Blaine's idea of keeping up the duty on 
sugar, in the hope that we may be able to make a trade some time, 
is not sound. If anything is to be done, it is to take off the duty 
and then provide for a restoration of it as against those countries 
which in a specified time do not allow us reciprocal advantages 
such as we may require. 



238 Orville H. Piatt 

manufactured in Connecticut was included in the list of 
what those countries would take in consideration of our 
taking some of their products free; third, — it would give 
a great boom to the idea of Canadian reciprocity, which 
is all against New England interests, especially our agri- 
cultural interests along the border. And yet I think the 
drift is toward a provision that if by a certain time the 
countries raising sugar do not accept free from us certain 
things that the President shall ask that the duties shall be 
restored. We got nothing when we made coffee and tea 
free. I am afraid of it — afraid it will be the beginning of 
the end of the protective system. It is very fascinating 
as I have said, but we never made a reciprocity treaty yet 
by which we did not lose. 

Reciprocity and all, the McKinley bill had a rough 
time when it came to be passed on by the people. 
While the bill was on its passage through Congress the 
Democratic opposition was busily engaged in fanning 
into flame the discontent which is an invariable accom- 
paniment of every revision of the tariff. The cry went 
up that the new rates of duty were prohibitive ; that the 
bill was framed in the interest of the rich as against the 
poor; that the workingman's dinner pail was heavily 
taxed ; that the burden pressed cruelly upon the family 
of moderate means. Merchants all over the United 
States in every city and village arbitrarily raised the 
price on every kind of commodity, feeling that they 
could safely charge the increased cost to the increased 
rates of the McKinley bill. In numerous instances the 
bill was held responsible for the increase in retail price 
of articles which were in no way aft'ected by it. The 
women of the country, influenced in their shopping by 
the outcry against the McKinley rates, joined in it, 
to the consternation of political leaders. The Repub- 



The Fateful Fifty-first Congress 239 

lican party was charged with reimbursing campaign 
contributions out of the pockets of the people; and to 
swell the cry, the Democrats South and North bayed 
lustily against the proposed Federal Elections law, 
which, borrowing a political epithet of the Grant ad- 
ministration, they had dubbed the " Force bill." The 
McKinley bill was so late in becoming a law that in the 
few weeks preceding election its real character could not 
be made known and the long session of Congress kept 
Senators and Representatives in Washington, where 
they could not explain it to their constituents. The 
result might have been foreseen. The Republican ma- 
jority in the House was overturned and for the last 
half of Mr. Harrison's administration a Democratic 
majority of almost unprecedented size helped to thwart 
his plans. 

Mr. Piatt was not politically blind, and he recognized, 
as did others, the tendency of the time, but he sturdily 
refused to be swept off his feet by popular clamor and 
up to the very end he contended stoutly that the 
McKinley bill carried a message of promise to American 
industries. 

Republican defeat in the November elections did not 
discourage him. It was in the winter of 1890-91 that 
his own re-election was pending, but fortunately there 
was no Republican opposition to his return and he was 
free to go his own way politically. 

To a Connecticut member of the House who had 
asked his advice about a speech he had in contempla- 
tion the following winter after the defeat in the Novem- 
ber election, Mr. Piatt wrote on December 3, 1890: 

Of course I don't want to influence you against what 
you think is right and proper ground to take at the board 



240 Orville H. Piatt 

of trade meeting. I don't believe free li:mber and free 
coal would help us a particle. As you say, taking half 
of the duty off of pine lumber has raised the price of it. I 
don't think the taking off of the whole duty would decrease 
the price at all, either on pine or spruce. It would simply 
add so much to Canadian stumpage and to transportation. 
We should not buy Nova Scotia coal as against American 
coal, if it were free. We might possibly get American coal 
a trifle cheaper, but I doubt that. What I fear is the giving 
aid and comfort to the Democrats. I do not want them to 
be encouraged just at present. They will twist anything 
you say, if it is in the slightest degree favorable to taking 
the duty off from any raw material into a condemnation 
of the whole protective policy, just as they did what Blaine 
said about reciprocity. The first step in the Democratic 
free trade programme is free trade on what they call raw 
materials, and, if they can get any one to advocate that, 
even as to any one item, they immediately claim a convert 
to their doctrine. We have trouble enough on hand, and 
my idea is that we had better not show any weakening 
anywhere along the line whatever we might think it best 
to do in the future. 

To the end of his career he never wavered in his 
faith. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE WILSON-GORMAN BILL 

An Aid to the Finance Committee — Mr. North's Experience- 
Active in Debate — Keen Analysis of the Democratic Position 
— "Incidental Protection" Ridiculed — A Deadly Blow at 
Farmers — Opposed to Free Raw Materials. 

THE McKinley tariff was doomed to a life altogether 
too brief to demonstrate its effectiveness as a 
protective and revenue-raising measure, and its ex- 
istence was confined to a period of political uncertainty 
which placed it continually at a disadvantage, so that 
its real merit as a piece of constructive legislation^ will 
never be known. The Democratic party, which got its 
foot into the stirrup in the elections of 1890, vaulted 
into the saddle two years later, and, having made its 
campaign on the issue of the tariff', felt compelled at 
least to attempt a fulfilment of its promise. 

In the abortive tariff legislation of the Fifty-third 
Congress, in 1894, resulting as it did in the hybrid 
Wilson-Gorman act which President Cleveland stig- 
matized as a work of "perfidy and dishonor," Mr. 
Piatt, as one of the minority in the Senate, was obliged 
to participate. He was not a member of the Finance 
Committee, although he probably would have been, had 
there been a Republican majority ,^ as Mr. Hiscock's 
retirement from the Senate had left a vacancy among 

the Eastern members of the Committee to which 
16 241 



242 Orville H. Piatt 

Connecticut might reasonably have laid claim. But 
although not a member he was taken freely into the 
councils of the minority members, and certain schedules 
of the proposed bill were turned over to him for consid- 
eration. An interesting light is thrown on his methods 
of work by S. N. D. North, afterwards director of the 
census, who came closely in contact with him at this 
time: 

I shall never forget the occasion of my first meeting 
with Senator Piatt. I was assisting Senator Aldrich as a 
tariff expert. Senator Piatt sent for me. He said: 

"I want to know all about the woollen schedule. At 
present I know very little about it. I wish you would help 
me out." 

We sat down in his room at the Arlington, and he began 
asking me questions. I never went through so searching 
a cross examination in my life. There was not a detail 
of the schedule that he did not want to know all about. 
Finally I was compelled to cry for mercy. I discovered 
that the thorough information which he had in mind to 
get was something which I was not in a position to give 
without further preparation, so I begged for time to look 
into the question a little more at my leisure, and then I 
went back to him. He resumed his cross examination and 
I did the best I could. What particularly impressed me 
was his evident determination to get at the truth ; the real 
reason for every item of the woollen schedule, and the 
clearness of his mental powers. He had a marvellous 
memory. When the bill came up for discussion every 
question he asked showed that the knowledge I had helped 
him to obtain stood in his mind. 

It was like him to debate more freely the Wilson- 
Gorman bill to which he was opposed than any one of 
the measures which he favored, and in the framing 
of some of which he had an important part. He was 



The Wilson-Gorman Bill 243 

satisfied that the various paragraphs of the McKinley 
and Dingley bih should be put on their passage without 
controversial contribution from him, but there was so 
much in the Wilson-Gorman schedules to which he 
took exception that jie threw himself into the combat, 
delivering effective blows where they would do most 
good. It was an opportunity for exposing the fallacies 
of the Democratic position which few others were so 
well qualified to take advantage of as he. His familiar- 
ity with industries and schedules and his forceful 
unadorned manner of speech rarely came into more 
effective play. Of his work it was said at the time 
by a Connecticut newspaper: 

Never before has Senator Piatt so revealed his strength 
of mind, his capacity for labor, his equipment for debate, 
his sound moral basis, his warm heart, his true regard for 
the common people and his lofty patriotism. . . . Sound 
judgment, common sense, ready wit, pat and luminous 
illustrations have abounded in his speeches and made them 
wise, interesting, and forcible. ... He has especially 
pleaded for the people of New England, and in doing it 
he has shown much of the sturdy, strongly moral, deeply 
thoughtful, shrewd humorous quahties that mark the New 
England character. In our opinion no man in the Senate 
has done so much work in this debate or done it so well. 

In advocating a duty of sixty cents a ton on coal 
instead of forty as recommended by the committee, he 
said : 

I wish the Democratic Free Trader could get the one idea 
into his mind as to what a benefit it is to the country to 
have all our work done here, what a benefit it is to have our 
wool grown here, and our ore dug here, and our coal mined 
here, rather than to have it done somewhere else. I should 
suppose that the underlying patriotism of American 



244 Orville H. Piatt 

Senators would get the better of their party predilections 
and party pride, so that they would not put into the bill any- 
thing which would strike down industries in this country. 
I stand for the system of protection because I will not 
desert the American laborer. I have no special right to 
call myself his champion, and I believe that the continu- 
ance of all these industries in the United States by American 
labor is the salvation of our civilization, and it is for that 
reason that I am a protectionist. No supposed sentiment 
that we could get coal a little cheaper in New England will 
for a moment turn me from the plain, straight path of 
protection, which a man who acts from principle and not 
from selfish aims ought to pursue. 

The Wilson bill as it came from the House had at 
least the virtue of consistency. It was a genuine 
tariff-for-re venue measure. Protective duties had been 
ruthlessly slaughtered. By the time it had come from 
under its treatment at the hands of the Senate Com- 
mittee it had lost even this merit. Higher duties had 
been restored here and there at the demand of Demo- 
cratic Senators interested in certain industries until the 
original measure was hardly recognizable. But the 
remodelling had not been in accordance with any 
economic plan. Mr. Piatt declared the difference 
between the two bills to be like the difference between 
electrocution and death by slow poison: 

The one is sudden and painless as the death of industries 
would have been under the Wilson bill; the other is tor- 
turing and lingering as the death of industries will be 
under the bill which we are now considering, should it 
become a law. . . . 

This is not a protective bill. It is not in any sense a 
recognition of the doctrine of protection high or low. It 
is not a bill for revenue with incidental protection. It is 



The Wilson-Gorman Bill 245 

a bill (and the truth may as well be told in the Senate of 
the United States) which proceeds upon free-trade prin- 
ciples except as to such articles as it has been necessary 
to levy protective duties upon to get the votes of Democratic 
Senators to pass the bill. I insist that never before in the 
history of this country has such a spectacle been presented 
in either branch of the National Legislature, and I pray to 
God it may never occur again. 

The bill as it came from the House of Representatives 
was mainly free from such a charge, but reaching here it 
was discovered that there was not a majority upon the 
Democratic side of the chamber to pass it. There was a 
body of Conservatives, as they were called, estimated at 
from five to fifteen, who were charged all over the country 
in Democratic newspapers with being traitors to the Demo- 
cratic party, and in great head-lines Democratic newspapers 
called upon the Democrats in the Senate who stood by the 
Chicago platform and proposed to pass a tariff bill, which 
should not be objectionable to the charge that it was rob- 
bery, to read the Conservatives out of the party. It was 
more of a task than the majority of the Democratic Senators 
desired to undertake. Consequently they surrendered to 
these conservatives, and the price of their votes appears 
in the protective duties which the bill contains; and there 
are no other protective duties in it. . . . 

It is strange, passing strange, that Senators who say they 
do not believe in protection, that Senators who say that the 
McKinley bill was the most infamous measure that was 
ever passed, should be found voting for duties equivalent to 
the McKinley rates upon some of those matters which 
most closely touch and affect the interests of the people 
of the United States. No such marvel has ever been seen 
under the sun as all the Democratic Senators, with the 
possible exception of the Senator from Texas (Mr. Mills), 
giving way to this demand of the sugar trust. How this 
chamber has rung with denunciations of the sugar trust! 
How the ears of waiting and listening multitudes in 



246 Orville H. Piatt 

Democratic political meetings have been vexed with reit- 
erated denunciations of this sugar trust! And here every 
Democratic Senator, with one exception, is ready to vote 
for a prohibitive duty upon refined sugar! 

He ridiculed the idea of " incidental protection " 
which Democrats looking for an excuse to impose 
duties on their own pet products made much of. He 
declared that there was no such principle : 

If by incidental protection you mean that the metal 
working industries of Connecticut and the other Eastern 
States are to be absolutely slaughtered and destroyed by 
the bill and that the sugar trust is to have a prohibitive 
duty upon refined sugar, you will find plenty of it in the bill ; 
but I had not supposed that was the doctrine of the Demo- 
cratic party. If you would make duties all along the bill 
protective, there would be no "incidental" protection in 
it; it would be "deliberate" protection. If you reduce the 
duties all along the bill below the protective point, there 
will be no "incidental" protection. You cannot so con- 
struct a bill ; it is impossible. You might as well attempt 
to have two and two make five as to construct a bill upon 
the principle that you will impose duties for revenue, 
which, while they do not protect, carry incidental pro- 
tection with them. 

He turned against the majority their own argument . 
that the American consumer pays the protective tariff 
tax. It was estimated that the bill carried a reduction 
of thirty-one per cent, in duties. Then, from the stand- 
point of a tariff' reformer, he pointed out the value of all 
goods on hand at the time the bill was to take effect 
would be reduced thirty-one per cent. — practically one 
third. It might be all very well to punish the manu- 
facturers but why punish the merchants ? In the de- 
nunciation of protection he had never heard anything 



The Wilson-Gorman Bill 247 

about the "robber merchant." It had always been 
the " robber manufacturer " upon whose head the vials 
of wrath had been poured. 

The proposed legislation he declared to be a crime. 
On the eighth day of November, 1892, every man in 
the United States who was willing to work could find 
employment at remunerative wages. The " army of 
peace " was better fed, better clothed, better housed 
than the workingmen of any other nation or of any 
previous time : 

Now, the very threat of the passage of this bill has 
changed all. The men who are coming to the capital of 
the United States to present petitions — if they are as 
represented to be, peaceful and peaceable citizens, not 
tramps or vagrants, " Coxey's Army" — ^are men who on 
the eighth day of November, 1892, were at work at good 
wages, and the very threat of the passage of this bill, among 
other dire results, has reduced them to the condition of the 
unemployed. I say that to adopt a policy which throws 
the citizens of the Republic into necessary idleness is a 
crime; and no greater crime can be devised against the 
Republic than that. . . 

I would not indulge in class legislation. I do not be- 
lieve under our Constitution and under our system that we 
can provide work directly by the Government for the 
citizen who is unemployed; but I do believe that when 
two systems of finance are presented to the country, and 
one of them will give employment at remunerative wages 
to all our people, and the other will deprive our people of 
work and force them into the great army of the unemployed, 
it is not only folly, but criminality, which adopts that system 
which must fill the streets of our cities and the highways 
of our agricultural community with idle men who have 
no means of support. . . . 

We managed from 1890 to 1893 to keep all our people 



248 Orville H. Piatt 

employed ; we furnished work even for those who came from 
foreign countries to these shores to better their condition; 
but when we adopt a bill, the purpose of which and the 
avowed object of which is to buy goods in foreign countries, 
because, as is supposed, they can be bought cheaper there 
than here, then we displace so much labor in this country. 
It is no longer a question of whether wages are to be kept 
at their present standard or to be reduced ; it is a question 
what is to be done with the men who want to perform the 
work which others are performing in other countries when 
they find no demand for their labor in this country. 

When he came to the discussion of the wool schedule 
he suggested another line of thought. He declared 
that the tactics of the free trader from the beginning 
had been, first, to bribe the manufacturer of woollen 
goods with the idea of free wool and protected manu- 
facture of woollen goods, and then, when that had been 
accomplished, to excite the hostility of the wool grower 
and the farmer against the manufacturer. The first 
proposition of that plan involved the idea that the 
manufacturer of woollen goods could be bribed. 

He pointed out that the pending bill seemed to 
strike its deadliest blow at the farmers all around. 
It was not wool alone which was slaughtered ; but there 
was to be free wheat, free corn, free rye, free oats, a 
reduction of one half of the duty on hay, the largest 
crop in the United States, and innumerable reductions 
below the protective point upon the products of the 
farm: 

Why is it? Is the farmer the "robber"? Is the farmer 
the " robber baron " ? Is he the " greedy monopolist " ? Is 
he the man who is plundering the people? There is but 
one reason for it ; there is but one explanation of the policy 



The Wilson-Gorman Bill 249 

of the bill, and that I have already given. It is, strike the 
farmer first, then arouse his hostility against the protected 
industries in the country. 

I said that the woollen manufacturer of New England 
was not to be purchased by that bribe, and was not to be 
caught by that bait. I have too much faith in the agri- 
culturist of the country to believe that he will fall into the 
trap which has been set by the free traders. There is 
no reason why this should be done. No excuse can be 
given for it. If a revenue tariff is the doctrine of the Demo- 
cratic party, there is no article upon which a revenue duty 
could be more properly imposed than upon wool. If a 
revenue duty with incidental protection be the doctrine 
of the Democratic party, there is no article upon which an 
incidentally protective duty could be more properly levied 
than upon wool. This proposition is without excuse, 
wicked and monstrous, throwing away the revenue which 
is derived from this article, and which ought to be derived 
from it, upon a pretended benefit to the consumer of 
woollen goods. 

After the Senate by a vote of 46 to 4 had defeated 
Senator Peffer's motion to put iron on the free list, — 
only one Democrat, Hill of New York, voting in the 
affirmative, — Mr. Piatt moved to increase the rate from 
40 cents to 60 cents a ton. He made his amendment 
the text for a short sermon on the attitude of New 
England : 

I move this amendment because I am a protectionist, 
and because I wish to vote for protective duties for all 
industries. As a New England man, since there has been 
so much said in this discussion about our desiring in New 
England to secure protective duties for ourselves with 
alleged indifference to the other industries of the country, 
I do not wish to let that suggestion pass without notice. 
We mine no iron ore to speak of in New England. There 



250 Orville H. Piatt 

is a little mined in one county in my State, a little in 
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and a very little in 
Maine, but the production of iron ore in New England is 
so small that it cuts no figure in the great production of 
iron ore in this country. 

We have been told that New England is for free coal, 
free iron ore, and free wool. If I know the sentiment of 
New England and the New England manufacturers, the 
New England workingman and the New England mer- 
chants do not desire or ask for free raw materials, as they 
are called in this respect. We do not want free iron ore; 
we do not want free coal, and we do not want free wool, 
for the reason that we are protectionists, and we desire 
that there shall be extended to every industry in the United 
States, whether it be mining, farming, or manufacturing, 
the same protection which we believe to be good for our 
own industries in New England. 

We beHeve in protection as a system; we believe that 
every industry in the United States carried on by American 
labor needs such protection as will enable it to fairly com- 
pete with the industries carried on by the laborers of other 
countries, and we propose to stand by it no matter what 
its immediate effect may be upon the particular industries 
in our section. 

Impotent though the Fifty-third Congress was, it 
contrived to send the Tariff bill to the White House 
through the abject surrender of the majority in the 
House of Representatives in accepting the Senate 
schedules without amendment. President Cleveland 
allowed the bill to become a law without his signature, 
but the Wilson-Gorman act was branded at its birth. 
Even before its passage, it was recognized that the 
party which framed it and forced it upon a reluctant 
Executive was doomed; that the House of Representa- 
tives to be chosen in the following November would 



The Wilson-Gorman Bill 251 

have a Republican majority, and that in all probability 
the President and Congress to be chosen two years 
later would be Republican, thus insuring a speedy sub- 
stitution for the Wilson-Gorman act of a consistent 
protective tariff. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE DINGLEY TARIFF 

A Member of the Finance Committee — A Controlling Factor in 

Tarifif Legislation — Attitude toward the Reciprocity Clauses — 

A Strong Advocate of Administration Policies. 

AS a sequence to the extraordinary exhibition of 
legislative imbecility afforded by the Fifty-third 
Congress, the House of Representatives in the Fifty- 
fourth Congress, elected in 1894, was Republican by a 
majority which nobody had ventured to predict. Two 
years later William McKinley, the " Advance Agent of 
Prosperity," was nominated for President by a great 
majority, mainly because he stood in the popular mind 
emphatically as the representative of those issues which 
were the antithesis of the issues which for four years 
had spelled financial upheaval and distress, free soup- 
houses, and idle mills. He was elected by a majority 
equally striking, because in spite of Mr. Bryan and the 
free-silver diversion the Republican party, under his 
leadership, was known to stand for protection and 
prosperity. 

The first task set for the new administration was to 
place on the statute-books a tariff act which should 
embody the protective principle, and a special session 
of Congress was called for that purpose to meet im- 
mediately after the inauguration. In anticipation 

of the special session, the Ways and Means Committee 

252 



The Dingley Tariff 253 

of the House, of which Mr. Dingley of Maine was Chair- 
man, spent the entire winter of 1896-7 in framing a bill 
to be laid before Congress as speedily as possible after 
its assembling. In due season this bill went over to 
the other end of the Capitol there to meet the re- 
modelling which is the fate of every revenue measure. 
TMr. Piatt had been placed upon the Finance Committee 
at the beginning of the Fifty-fourth Congress as soon as 
the Republicans secured control of the Senate, and at 
the beginning of the Fifty-fifth Congress he was the 
fourth member of the Committee in seniority, outranked 
only by the venerable Chairman, Morrill of Vermont, 
Allison, and Aldrich. Other Republican members were 
Wolcott of Colorado, Burrows of Michigan, Jones of 
Nevada. It was the understanding that Aldrich, 
Allison, and Piatt w^ere to pull the laboring oars. Their 
duty was to understand the proposed bill, schedule by 
schedule, to defend it on the floor of the Senate, and to 
act as managers for the Senate in the conference be- 
tween the two Houses. Mr. Piatt went at this work 
with his accustomed thoroughness. Even while the 
bill was under consideration by the House, he and his 
associates on the Committee were conducting their own 
inquiries and tentatively framing their own schedules. 
Russell of Connecticut was a member of the Ways and 
Means Committee, as useful at one end of the Capitol 
as Piatt was at the other. The two men were the 
closest of friends and they worked together in effective 
harmony. 

Whenever a Connecticut manufacturer applied to 
either Senator or Representative for help he was likely 
to be cross-questioned in a way to convince him of the 
advisability of knowing his own business, as when a 
New Milford man received the following: 



2 54 Orville H. Piatt 

In talking with Mr. Russell I find that he would be glad 
to be more fully informed as to the nature and extent of 
your business. One who has a proposition to make in 
regard to a duty upon any article needs to be fully in- 
formed. Will you therefore kindly state the uses to which 
this material is put when manufactured, and the propor- 
tions of its use — that is, what proportion of it may be used 
for a porcelain, for pottery, and for other things? Do the 
three words "quartz," "siHca," and "flint" mean the same 
thing, or are they different materials? How are they used 
when ground? Are they mixed with clay and earths and 
kaolin? What foreign article comes in competition with 
them? It is not easy for one not familiar with the 
business to see how black pebbles come in competition 
with white quartz. What should a duty be placed 
upon? What language should be used in order to cover 
all the materials or products that come in competition with 
this? 

I think you will appreciate how fully and particularly 
one has to know these things in order to frame language 
which will be suitable for the purpose intended, or to know 
in what class of articles of the bill as hitherto read the new 
articles subject to duty should be placed; and then how 
much is invested in the business in this country approxi- 
mately? What is the value of the product here? How 
much have importations been? What is the value of the 
raw material and of the finished product? Where is the 
raw material produced — anywhere except in the western 
part of our State, and where do the things which come in 
competition with it come from — what countries ? These are 
some of the questions which it is necessary for any one 
considering the matter to be quite thoroughly informed 
about. Have you any suggestions to make as to the par- 
ticular language which ought to be employed in a bill to 
effect the object you desire? All these and other questions 
which will readily suggest themselves to you I hope you 
may be able to answer. 



The Dingley Tariff 255 

He was continually in correspondence with many 
men from many States, was occupied practically every 
waking hour for many weeks in committee or in con- 
ference, was in his seat in the Senate constantly while 
the Tariff bill was under consideration, was as potential 
as any other man in shaping the Dingley bill, and yet 
in the whole course of the debate he did not make a 
single speech of even moderate length. He answered 
questions, gave information in regard to the most 
complicated of the schedules, was watchful, helpful, 
industrious, invaluable, but although he was on his 
feet scores of times, he did not indulge in a flight of 
oratory for home consumption. The nearest approach 
to it was when a Democratic Senator asked him if the 
foreigner paid the tax, and tempted him to reply : 

I must ask to be excused from entering into a discussion 
of the principles upon which the protective system is based. 
Unfortunately the Senators who would like to explain it 
fully and at great length, and answer the very remarkable 
and wonderful statements which have been made on the 
other side for the last three or four weeks, are compelled 
to sit still in order to secure the passage of the pending 
bill within any time that will satisfy the country. 

Business interests everywhere were pressing Congress 
to get the new law into operation, not only because the 
discussion of any tariff bill leaves commerce in a state 
of uncertainty, but because the country was for having 
the Wilson-Gorman act wiped off the statute-books 
with the least possible delay. Mr. Piatt sympathized 
with this feeling, and yet he appreciated the importance 
of making haste slowly with legislation which was so 
vitally to affect the welfare of the country. He was 
ready to devote many weeks to the consideration of 



2 56 Orville H. Piatt 

the bill. This feeling he expressed in writing to Charles 
Hopkins Clark, while the bill was still in the House : 

I saw a long editorial in the Hartford Courant with 
reference to the duty on books. I think that was one of ^ 
the items which probably received very httle consideration, 
owing to the haste which was supposed to be necessary 
by the Committee in completing its consideration of the 
Tariff bill so as to get it before the new Congress at its 
opening, and that a mistake was made in that as in many 
other matters, by reason of the supposed necessity of 
immediate action. I think there is no doubt that it will 
be corrected, by the House probably, if not, then by the 
Senate. I presume that the same pressure for the passage 
of the bill quickly will be brought to bear upon the Senate, 
and I simply want to excuse, in advance, any seeming 
delay which may occur there by saying that the demand for 
the passage of "a" bill is all well enough, but we cannot 
afford to pass an ill-considered bill. If we did, the country 
in six months' time would be blaming us a good deal 
more than it will if we take time for careful investigation. 
In the House nothing is considered, but is put through 
arbitrarily. In the Senate, some one must be ready to 
give a reason for every rate of duty, for every classification, 
and to explain the scope and effect of every use of language. 

To that task he devoted himself. The Dingley bill 
remained in the Senate from April ist, to July 7th, a 
period of over three months, and he was on duty with 
Mr. Aldrich and Mr. Allison all that time, laboring often 
far into the night. The end crowned the work; for a 
measure was finally enacted under which the industries 
of the country were to thrive to a degree beyond the 
dreams of those who framed it, and which is now 
acknowledged, after twelve years of practical test, to 
have been the most scientific tariff bill ever constructed. 

He not only supported the reciprocity clauses of the 



The Dingley Tariff 257 

Dingley law, but, after the law had gone into effect and 
Mr. Kasson by direction of President McKinley and 
Secretary Hay had negotiated treaties accordingly with 
various countries, he sustained the administration in 
its attempt to secure ratification of the treaties in the 
Senate. It was not an easy thing for him to do, and he 
seems to have given the matter considerable thought 
before making up his mind. In writing in December, 
1899, about the French treaty he said: 

I am inclined to think that the .sentiment of the Senate 
with regard to reciprocity treaties is still in an unsettled 
condition. Of course every Senator is being urged, by 
some one who thinks that his business is going to be more 
or less injured, to oppose the treaty on that ground, but 
I do not think that it is going to be looked at from such a 
narrow standpoint as that. The broader view is the one 
which ought to be taken, and that is whether the reci- 
procity treaties, on the whole, will be beneficial to the 
United States or otherwise, and I think that there has 
been more prospective opposition to the French treaty 
created by the publications which have come from Paris 
than in any other way. The French Government, to over- 
come the opposition to the treaty there, seems to have 
allowed a statement to go out that the French negotiators 
won a great advantage for France over the United States 
by the treaty, and people who do not understand the matter 
very well, whether they are Senators or business men, are 
likely to say that if that is so we do not want the treaty. 
I do not know how many things Kasson gave away at the 
last in order to get the treaty signed, but I know he gave 
a good many, and some of them hurt. Still a man who is 
himself a fractional element, even though it be a small 
fractional element, of the treaty-making power, ought 
to look at such agreements without prejudice and not be 
governed by minor considerations. 
17 



258 Orville H. Piatt 

I really do not feel quite settled myself about this matter. 
It all turns, in my mind, upon the question of whether we 
have obtained fair equivalents for the concessions we are 
making. From the standpoint of a man who is making a 
bargain, we might, however, afford to give away something 
if we were sure of bringing about pleasant, mutual, and 
satisfactory relations between ourselves and France. In 
other words, good-will would be worth paying something 
for, if you could rely upon a Frenchman's good-will, but, 
as I say, I have not yet any decided convictions or opinions 
in regard to this French treaty. I have been waiting 
rather to understand it more fully than I do. It went to 
the Committee on Foreign Relations, and I suppose, al- 
though I do not know that I am right, that when they 
have heard Mr. Kasson's explanation of the treaty they are 
likely in some way to ask information and advice of the 
Finance Committee, and I suppose that when that time 
comes I could get a little more intelligent idea of the 
situation here. I have been holding my mind in a recep- 
tive state. I do not think that there has been much talk 
about it among Senators. I do not think that any political 
feeling has developed, and I imagine that a good many of 
the Senators are in my state of mind about it — that is, that 
they want to ratify it unless we have so decidedly the worst 
of it in the treaty that we ought not to do it. I do not think 
that the doctrine of protection is very much involved in it, 
though I am and have been a protectionist, because I 
believed in the doctrine. But protection and reciprocity 
have not been thought to be incompatible, and I am quite 
sure that there are a good many articles on which we have 
allowed reductions that were somewhat over-protected 
in the Dingley bill. 

The duty on fruits was forced upon us, but later, like 
a good many other articles, parties engaged in producing 
them could stand a reasonable reduction of the duty with- 
out practical loss. In some instances, either from intention 
or because our commissioner had to agree in order to get 



The Dingley Tariff 259 

any treaty at all, there have been reductions which will 
be somewhat harmful. 

I do not know where I may finally bring up on it. My 
opinion is that I shall be for the treaty, although Con- 
necticut people suppose that they are hit all along the hne. 



CHAPTER XXI 



FREE CUBA 



Opposed to Recognition of Belligerency — Tries to Prevent War — 
Pleads for Moderation — A Pillar of Conservatism — A Strong 
Aid to the Administration — Growth of the War Sentiment — 
Destruction of the Maine — The President's Message — Adop- 
tion of Resolutions for Intervention — In a Small Minority — 
Hostilities Precipitated. 

IN the spring of 1895 a situation developed in Cuba 
which was to exert a far-reaching influence upon 
the future of the United States, and which called into 
play, before its course was run, the highest powers of 
American public men. The insurrection which was 
precipitated by the landing of Jose Marti in February, 
1895, rapidly assumed proportions setting it apart from 
the many uprisings with which the "ever faithful Isle" 
had been infested at intervals for seventy years. In 
six months the insurgents had taken possession of 
Santiago and of all the rural districts as far west as 
Havana — more than had been accomplished in the 
entire course of the "ten years' war" which had ended 
twenty years before. Sympathy in the United States, 
aroused by constantly increasing newspaper exploita- 
tion of the gallant struggle for liberty going on so near 
our shores, became acute as the session of Congress of 
1895-6 approached. There was an insistent demand 
that the sentiment of the American people should find 

voice at Washington. President Cleveland and Secre- 

260 



Free Cuba 261 

tary Olney were opposed to any action ; and the atten- 
tion of the Cuban sympathizers was turned to Congress. 
Many resolutions were introduced — some declaring for 
the immediate recognition of independence, some em- 
bodying a recognition of belligerency, others declaring 
for intervention, still others for neutrality. Senator 
Piatt felt that Congress for the time at least should keep 
hands off. He regarded the recognition of belligerency 
as a matter primarily for the Executive branch of the 
Government. The position which he assumed was far 
from popular. The trend of sentiment everywhere was 
unmistakably toward the recognition of the insurgents. 
Yellow journals were inflaming the public mind and 
Connecticut was no less Cuban-mad than other States. 
Mr. Piatt's re-election to the Senate was pending. 
Ambitious rivals were watching their opportunity. 
But he did not care what effect his attitude might have 
on his personal fortunes. He did not shrink from the 
issue. On January 16, 1896, he said in the Senate: 

Recognition of the insurgents as belligerents is not a 
matter which is due to them; but it is a question which 
pertains solely to the interests of the United States. If 
a proclamation of neutrahty were issued . . . it would be 
considered, and justly considered under international law, 
as an unfriendly act to the parent Government. ... We 
in this country sympathize naturally with every people 
that is seeking to estabHsh a republican form of government; 
but I think that we ought not to rush hastily into a matter 
of according belHgerent rights to such a people. We ought 
to observe the rules which have been laid down by inter- 
national comity with reference to such matters. I should 
be very sorry to see any resolution passed here which in 
any way would indicate that the President of the United 
States and the State Department were not doing all that 



262 Orville H. Piatt 

that branch of the Government ought to do with reference 
to the conflict now pending in a neighboring foreign country. 

He felt that Congress could not with propriety go 
beyond a declaration of sympathy unless it intended 
frankly to declare war. Resolutions were adopted 
by House and by Senate, one declaring that the United 
States ought to be neutral, the other that the United 
States ought to intervene. The Senate managers of the 
Conference Committee recommended that the Senate 
abandon its own resolutions and adopt those passed by 
the House. Senator Piatt urged that the report of the 
Conference Committee be disagreed to, and on March 
23, 1 896, as expressing the real sentiment of the Senate, 
he submitted the following: 

Resolved, That the Senate (the House of Representatives 
concurring) hereby expresses its earnest desire and hope 
that Cuba may soon become a free, independent, and repub- 
lican government, and that the friendly offices of the United 
States should be offered by the President to the Spanish 
Government to secure such result. 

That he thought deeply on this subject is shown by 
his correspondence. Writing on March 7, 1896, to 
Gen. E. S. Greeley of New Haven, he said: 

I have a very decided feeling that we are letting our 
sympathy run away with our judgment, and yet it is 
undeniable, I think, that Spain has treated its colony of 
Cuba with more harshness than has ever been shown by a 
parent country to such a colony; has taxed them heavily 
without representation, and has been severe and almost 
brutal in its treatment. Then General Weyler's published 
orders seem to indicate a barbarous and cruel spirit in the 
matter of conducting the war against rebels, or patriots, 
whichever they may be. Under such circumstances it is 



Free Cuba 263 

almost impossible not to sympathize with the people of 
Cuba if they are in good faith and earnestly striving to 
throw off Spanish authority and establish free government. 
To what extent this condition of things exists it is almost 
impossible to ascertain. Reports are very conflicting and, 
as I believe, so exaggerated on both sides that we don't 
know the truth of the situation. I have not believed that 
there was a case outside of the ground of sympathy for the 
recognition of the insurgents as belligerents, and yet I am 
inclined to think that I would vote a resolution of sympathy. 

A few days later, on March 1 2th, he wrote to A. D. 
Osborne of New Haven: 

I do not propose to vote for the Cuban resolutions in their 
present form, and if I get the opportunity shall state my 
reasons therefor. 

On March 14th, he wrote to Rev. E. P. Parker of 
Hartford : 

It has been understood here, at least since January, 
that I did not beheve in the foohshness which prevails 
with regard to Cuba. I send you from the Record of the 
sixteenth of January a few words that I said; I don't sup- 
pose they had much influence, but they indicate what I 
thought of the subject at that time. A strange thing in all 
this discussion is that the Committee on Foreign Relations 
does not seem to have examined the law or the facts with 
regard to Cuba, at least they have not referred to the law 
and have been quite chary as to the facts. Probably we 
cannot stop the passage of these resolutions, but we will 
get enough votes against them as they now stand to show 
quite a conservative element, and I intend, some time before 
the debate closes, to make my position known. 

On March i6th, he wrote to H. Wales Lines: 

If I get a chance at Cuba, I am going to say that it is 
quite proper for Congress to express its desire that Cuba 



264 Orville H. Piatt 

should become a government, republican in form and spirit, 
but at that Congress ought to stop ; that we ought not to 
recognize belligerency, because there is no warrant for it 
in the conditions existing in Cuba considered with reference 
to the rules of international law for a hundred years, and 
our own position frequently and vigorously stated; and 
that above all it is entirely wrong to talk about intervention 
on account of the proximity of Cuba or the loss which people 
of the United States may be sustaining in the way of trade. 
If what I say shall be unpopular, I cannot help it. I shall 
at least try to make my position clear and then must take 
the verdict of the people upon it. 

To Franklin Farrell of Ansonia, he wrote on March 
30th: 

I should be very glad to see free government established 
in Cuba, but I don't think that the United States ought to 
go to war with Spain to secure that end, or depart from its 
established policy in dealing with foreign nations. 

The resolutions finally adopted after much debate and 
conference declared that a state of war existed in Cuba, 
that the United States would observe strict neutrality, 
and that the President should offer the good offices 
of the United States with the Spanish Government to 
secure the recognition of the independence of the 
island. 

As might have been expected, this declaration had no 
effect. The insurrection continued, likewise the agita- 
tion in the United States. It was the year of the 
Presidential election. Both great political parties at 
their national conventions passed resolutions of sym- 
pathy with Cuba. 

A Republican President and House of Representa- 
tives were elected by great majorities, and in the winter 
preceding the inauguration of President McKinley the 



Free Cuba 265 

Cuban question became still more acute. The Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations, through Senator Cameron 
of Pennsylvania, on December 21, 1896, reported a 
brief resolution recognizing the republic of Cuba. 
It was accompanied by a voluminous report. The 
business community was agitated. Stocks went tum- 
bling. Secretary Olney came out in an interview in 
which he declared that President Cleveland would pay 
no attention to the joint resolution, even if it passed 
Congress over the veto ; because the right of recognition 
pertained solely to the Executive, and the resolution 
would be only the expression of opinion of " certain 
eminent gentlemen." In the closing hours of the 
administration it was not thought well to force such an 
issue and so the resolution slumbered on the calendar. 

Senator Piatt was greatly exercised by this agitation 
in Congress and among the people. It seemed to him 
that the United States was being thoughtlessly forced 
into a position where war with Spain would be in- 
evitable. On December 18, 1895, we find him writing 
to Isaac H. Bromley of the New York Tribune as 
follows : 

Your articles in the Tribune about Cuba are in accord 
with my judgment. But if the sober, thoughtful business 
interests of the country don't want a resolution passed 
through Congress recognizing "the independence of the 
republic of Cuba" they must speak out and speak quickly 
and loudly. This false devotion to the cause of liberty, the 
uneasiness which prevails, and the desire for patriotic no- 
toriety is acting and reacting on members of the Senate and 
House who are usually level-headed, and things are being 
worked up to a frenzy that is sweeping such men off their 
feet. It seems to be pretty much understood that our Sen- 
ate Committee on Foreign Relations is going to report such 



266 Orville H. Piatt 

a resolution, and if it does, the great probability now is that 
it would pass the Senate. It is hard to stem the water 
when the dam breaks away. There is no republic of Cuba, 
and the people there who claim there is have not established 
their independence any more than the Armenians have 
theirs in Turkey. The newspaper rot about what is going 
on there, though published one day and contradicted the 
next, seems to stir up all the aggressive spirit in the minds 
of the people, and the Cuban junta or legation, or whatever 
it is called, is active and pestiferous in circulating its views 
of the situation. It is a case of Naboth's vineyard. Men 
whose love of humanity was not fluttered when in Texas 
about a year ago a negro was covered with kerosene oil 
and burned to death on a public platform in the presence of 
7000 yelling people, are shedding tears over the sad fate 
of Maceo. So I repeat what I said in the first place, that 
if those who do not want a war with Spain (because if we 
recognize an independence which does not exist, we ought 
to go and establish it and should probably be forced into a 
war anyway) had better bestir themselves. It is another 
case like the sound-money sentiment of the country sitting 
still and allowing silver to be howled in every schoolhouse 
of the United States without making a reply. 

On the following day he wrote to Charles Hopkins 
Clark, editor of the Hartford Courant : 

The Foreign Relations Committee is going to report on 
Monday a resolution recognizing "the independence of the 
republic of Cuba, " and unless people are ready to sit still 
and see that done without protest, they ought to give 
expression to their opinions at once. 

To Hon. John Birge he wrote: 

To pass such a resolution would be mockery and ludicrous 
if we did not intend by armed force to help the insurgents 
to achieve the independence which we recognize, though 
in fact it does not exist. If we pass such a resolution we 



Free Cuba 267 

ought to send the army and navy there to make independ- 
ence and a repubUcan government an accomplished fact. 
And I cannot look upon a question so grave and serious as 
this from the mere standpoint of sentiment. 

The legal and constitutional question involved — as 
to whether the right of recognition of belligerency did 
not rest exclusively with the Executive — was one which 
disturbed even some of those who were favorable to the 
adoption of unequivocal resolutions, although, as in all 
such cases where Congress has set its mind on the 
accomplishment of a certain end, the doubtful consti- 
tutionality of the action would not have been permitted 
to block the path of its legislative purpose. Mr. Piatt 
was one of those who believed the President alone was 
empowered to recognize belligerency, but there were 
lawyers, equally distinguished, who held to the contrary 
opinion. 

On December 21st, the day the resolution was re- 
ported, he indicated his perplexity in a letter to former 
Senator George F. Edmunds: 

My own view is that, under the Constitution, the matter 
of dealing with foreign powers and recognizing their 
sovereignty or the recognition of belligerent rights is 
committed to the Executive branch, that Congress has 
never yet attempted to pass any resolutions which did not 
recognize either in terms, or tacitly, this doctrine, and that 
all our diplomatic history confirms the understanding of 
lawyers and statesmen that the power rests alone with the 
President. 

Of course, I have not investigated it as closely on authori- 
ties and precedents as a Senator should in order to talk 
about it, but the claim that the President cannot effectively 
recognize a foreign power without the aid of Congress is 
rather embarrassing. He cannot send a minister without 



2 68 Orville H. Piatt 

an appropriation for his salary by Congress, so that, as in 
most of the cases where power is committed to one branch, 
the concurrence of the other is necessary to make it effective. 
It is plain to my mind that Congress should not attempt to 
pass a resolution which assumes to recognize the independ- 
ence of a revolutionary people, but I am a little troubled 
about the effect of such action by joint resolution passed 
over the Presidential veto. It would be an embarrassing 
situation to say the least, and yet I cannot think that it 
would operate as such a recognition of the new Government 
as that the courts in the cases which might arise would hold 
it to be an accomplished fact. 

With the incoming of the new administration there 
was a lull for a while and then fire broke out afresh w4th 
increasing fury. Weyler's system of reconcentration 
was achieving its cruel ends. Outrages on American 
citizens — most of them naturalized Cubans — called for 
redress. President McKinley, more alert than his 
predecessor, demanded release and redress in the case 
of every American prisoner, and by the end of April 
all were released. On May 20, 1897, the Senate with- 
out division passed a joint resolution recognizing Cuban 
belligerency. It went to sleep in the House under 
Speaker Reed's careful nursing. But just then Presi- 
dent McKinley, informed by consular reports that, under 
the reconcentration system, American citizens as well 
as natives were being starved to death, sent a special 
message to Congress asking for $50,000 with which to 
send supplies to those Americans who were suffering at 
the hands of Spain. Congress acted immediately. The 
act was approved May 24, 1897; and, with the consent 
of Spain, American interference was at last a fact, 
through the feeding of starving Americans and others 
in the devastated island. The next six months was a 



Free Cuba 269 

period of negotiations, of demands and propositions on 
the part of the United States — of broken promises 
and procrastinating assurances on the part of Spain. 
At last the administration determined to send a battle- 
ship to Havana for the protection of Americans there. 
The Maine arrived in Havana on January 24, 1898. 
On February 9, 1898, there appeared the letter of 
the Spanish Minister in Washington, Sehor Dupuy de 
Lome, written on December 25, 1897, containing coarse 
and insulting references to President McKinley. Seven 
days later, on February i6th, while public feeling was 
still high, came the destruction of the Maine in Havana 
harbor. The smouldering embers of war broke into 
flame. 

Senator Piatt, watching with apprehension the 
growth of national passion, maintained his poise. He 
was in thorough sympathy with President McKinley 
in the endeavor to compose all differences without 
resort to arms, or, if that failed, then to postpone the 
conflict. He was not for " peace at any price." He was 
not governed by the protests of "business" and Wall 
Street against agitation which might unsettle values. 
He deplored war for its own sake, and looked with dread 
upon the prospect that the United States would plunge 
into it and bring all its horror upon the American 
people. Through these trying times he was an avenue 
of communication between the Capitol and the White 
House. His counsel was sought constantly by Presi- 
dent McKinley; and his pleas for moderation were 
listened to respectfully even by the most ardent of 
those who cried for war. There was a long, tense 
period of waiting while the Sampson board of inquiry 
was completing its work, and preparing its report on 
the cause of the destruction of the Maine. After 



270 Orville H. Piatt 

that report was sent to Congress on March 28th, it was 
plain to almost everybody that the resources of diplo- 
macy had failed ; but up to that time Senatoi Piatt and 
those who acted with him continued to use their powers 
of persuasion in what they felt to be an almost hope- 
less cause. On March 23d, writing to Rev. William 
B. Carey of North Stonington, Connecticut, he said; 

I can understand, I think, how intensely people get 
wrought up by the anticipation of war. For myself I 
believe that any relations existing between Spain and the 
United States are quite susceptible of amicable adjustment 
and if, as I believe, peace can be brought about in Cuba by 
peaceful methods by the United States, it would be a great 
crime to attempt to drive us to bring it about by fighting. 
It is very well to talk about destroying the Spanish navy. 
God alone knows whether it would be destroyed, whether 
it would not destroy us in case of war. Regiments of black 
soldiers would undoubtedly be good soldiers in Cuba when 
they were recruited, and organized, and disciplined, but, 
before that could occur, any emergency for their use would 
doubtless have passed. No one knows that we would ever 
get to Cuba if we undertook to send soldiers there, or, if we 
did get there, having destroyed the Spanish navy, that the 
necessity for any great number of soldiers would be ob- 
viated. I do not see how people contemplate war without 
horror or talk about it without shuddering, and unless it 
should appear that the Maine was destroyed by Spanish 
agency, I should not be able to formulate the rules which 
would justify the passage of a resolution declaring war. 
The consequences of war cannot be computed in dollars 
and cents; only in lives, and, if we succeed, what shall we 
get by it all? It is quite the time now for people to have 
cool heads. Hot talk should give way to calm judgment 
and dispassionate utterances. I only say this because I feel 
that some one must be level-headed now or our nation 



Free Cuba 271 

will be put in a wrong light in the eyes of the world and in 
the final judgment of our own conscience. 

On March 25th, writing to H. Wales Lines, he said: 

The situation here may be described as serious and 
critical. There is a fear that the radicals in Congress might 
be able to override the President and pass resolutions 
which would lead to immediate hostilities, but I think that 
danger is now past. Certainly I think the Senate will 
keep still until the President shall say to Congress that he 
has exhausted all means in his power to provide for closing 
the contest in Cuba. If he fails to bring about some action 
on the part of Spain which will look to the early settlement 
of the difficulties in Cuba, and communicates to Congress 
the fact that he has failed, I think there will be no possibility 
of preventing then the passage of a resolution for forcible 
intervention. Those who have been clamoring for liberty 
and freedom and war, have worked up a spirit in the country 
that something must be done and done quickly to stop 
the condition of things in Cuba, and I think Congress be- 
lieves that sentiment to be stronger and more general than 
it really is. I think the President himself believes that 
the people of the United States will not tolerate much 
longer the war in Cuba and that, if he cannot end it by 
negotiations, the people will insist that he shall do so by 
force. In the meantime, he will do all in his power for 
peaceful adjustment; but the difficulty is with Spain. 
Spain does not want war, but will not and apparently can 
not agree to independence, and it seems to have come down 
to about this. Will the people sustain the President in ac- 
cepting from Spain any proposed settlement which does not 
include absolute independence for Cuba? Spain might be 
induced to make more truly liberal propositions for auton- 
omy as it is called, or in the direction of self-government for 
Cuba than she has yet made. The question is, if she did, 
and the President beheved that the proposition ought to 
be accepted by the insurgents, will the country sustain him 



2 72 Orville H. Piatt 

in saying so if they feel sure of Cuban independence ? This 
sets forth the gravity of the situation. There has not been 
openly manifested yet a sentiment which indicates that 
the people do not want the United States to fight Spain 
to liberate Cuba if its independence cannot be brovght 
about by peaceable methods. The report of the naval 
board of inquiry is likely to excite them still more, but I 
think the conservative people of the United States and 
Congress will be able to prevent action over the President's 
head. If the President cannot get a settlement with 
Spain and the insurgents, which is equivalent to independ- 
ence, I fear nothing can restrain Congress from declaring for 
intervention, which is the same thing as declaring war. 

On the same date in a letter to Governor Cooke, he 
said: 

A few of us have determined that there ought to be 
no war if it can be avoided and yet we know that the 
situation is serious and critical and a little thing may plunge 
us into a conflict. It is very difficult to resist what is 
supposed to be the war spirit of the country. Represen- 
tations are made here all the time that the country is 
ready for war, and members of Congress urge the President 
to bring matters to an immediate issue; that unless Spain 
immediately surrenders control of Cuba and gives independ- 
ence to the insurgents, he should recommend Congress to 
pass resolutions directing intervention, which, of course, is 
equivalent to declaring war. What we who are classed as 
conservatives are trying to do is to prevent Congress over- 
riding the President and gain time for negotiations which 
we hope will result in some satisfactory adjustment of the 
conditions in Cuba, or in propositions on the part of Spain 
which ought to be satisfactory in the nature of things, so 
that we can have presented to Congress and to the people 
the alternative of accepting a settlement of affairs in Cuba 
which ought to be satisfactory to clear and reasoning 



Free Cuba 273 

people, or of going to war. I believe that if that alternative 
can be presented the sober second thought of the American 
people will keep us out of war. As I say the situation is 
critical. Members of Congress are frightened to do so lest 
they should be defeated in case absolute independence is 
not secured either by negotiation or by hostilities. The 
President has been very doubtful whether he could hold 
Congress in check but I think has now come to the con- 
clusion that the conservative element in Congress will stand 
by him. The pressure, however, for immediate action and 
intervention is very strong. 

Now, I have told you all that any one can know. It may 
come to war before the week is out. I think it will drift 
along for some time to come, and I hope that Spain may 
be induced to make propositions which under the circum- 
stances ought to be satisfactory. I think I see the em- 
barrassment you feel. If you should call a special session 
of the Legislature to put the National Guard in a state of 
efficiency, it would, of course, add at once to the general 
alarm. The tension is so great that anything done looking 
even remotely to hostilities tends to inflame public senti- 
ment. I suppose that letters have been written to you as 
to the governors of New York and Massachusetts asking 
what could be rehed upon from the State in case of necessity. 
The condition as it seems to me is serious enough, so that it 
would be well for you to come down and talk it over with 
the President and Secretary of War. 

A third letter, addressed to John H. Flagg, contains 
this paragraph : 

I suppose that the President for two or three weeks 
has been trying by such indirect methods as he may em- 
ploy to get Spain to consent to a liberal government in 
Cuba; Canada and Australia be^ng suggested as models. 
I think that if Spain would give that degree of freedom to 
Cuba, it would get the moral support at least of the United 
18 



2 74 Orville H. Piatt 

States. Speaking without information, I suppose that 
Spain has shown some incHnation in this direction. It 
has been understood here by those who have the President's 
confidence, that there would be no objection on the part 
of Spain to our sending suppHes to the sufferers, and there 
is evidently something, I do not know how much, in this 
idea of an armistice, probably not a technical armistice, 
but some cessation of hostilities while our negotiations are 
pending. To this extent there is probably foundation for 
the rumors in New York, but I do not think the situation 
clears up any. I think, as I telegraphed you, that the 
sentiment that there must be immediate action to the end 
that the conflict in Cuba shall cease, is growing, and is every 
day becoming more difficult to hold in check, and it has 
been a question all the while whether if Spain should propose 
anything short of absolute independence, no matter how 
liberal and just it might be. Congress would support the 
President in the acceptance of it or insist upon going to 
war. I have felt that the Congress would stand by the 
President, but I am getting a little shaky about it to-day. 
We had last week the Democrats pretty solidly agreeing to 
stand by the President and now they show a disposition to 
make their support conditioned on knowing what he is 
going to do to put an end to conditions in Cuba. I cannot 
give you any more complete statement of the situation. I 
understand that speeches advocating intervention are to be 
kept up in the Senate. Foraker and Billy Mason are going 
to speak, and it is rumored that Frye is. What the Foreign 
Relations Committee, which meets on Wednesday, will do no 
one knows. It has been thought that they might report 
an intervention resolution, and then again. we have thought 
that they would not do it until the President was ready for 
intervention, and that if they did do it, we could beat it in 
the Senate; but everything seems unsettled to-day. 

About the same time he gave to the press the follow- 
ing brief interview: 



Free Cuba 275 

I think there is altogether too much war talk. War 
is only to be contemplated with horror and should not be 
flippantly talked about. The United States must never 
engage in war except as a necessity, the necessity of de- 
fending its possessions or its honor. We must have no 
war unless we have a cause which shall justify it in the 
eyes of the world and to our own conscience. I do not 
think the sober second thought of the American people 
is for war, and I believe that our relations with Spain are 
susceptible of an amicable adjustment. 

The report of the naval board placing the responsi- 
bility for the destruction of the Maine upon Spanish 
agencies brought negotiations up with a sharp turn. It 
then became a question of days as to when the President 
should send a message to Congress which should serve 
as the foundation of resolutions providing for inter- 
vention by the United States. In the tenseness of 
feeling all over the United States every delay of twenty- 
four hours seemed an eternity; and the more earnest 
of the war party in Congress were suspicious of every 
postponement as an endeavor on the part of the 
administration to secure some kind of adjustment which 
would involve peace at the price of honor. 

Finally it was given out that the message would be 
sent in on Monday, April 4th. Then word came that 
it would surely go to Congress on Wednesday, April 6th. 
On that day the Capitol was crowded with an expectant 
throng; but no message came. Instead, the leaders of 
House and Senate were summoned to the White House 
where the President showed them a dispatch from 
Consul-General Lee saying that if the message went in 
that day, he could not answer for the lives of Americans 
in Havana and asking until Saturday to get them out 
of Cuba. 



2 76 Orville H. Piatt 

For this memorable time Senator Piatt's letters to 
his friend Flagg almost constitute a diary. Writing 
on April 2d, he says: 

There is not a great deal to be said to-day. If the 
President has made up his mind as to the particular points 
of his message to present to Congress he has not communi- 
cated the same in detail even to the members of his Cabinet 
yet. He has been much in consultation with Judge Day, 
and with the Attorney-General. He still wants, if possible, 
to avoid any immediate declaration of war by Congress, 
has still some hope that further negotiations may result 
more favorably. The difficulty is to get at it. Spain's 
answer seems to have closed the door to everything except 
an ultimatum. He has not yet said even what he thinks 
it would be wise for Congress to do ; he has taken to-day and 
to-morrow to put his message in shape. Very much depends 
upon his message. Congress, as indicated last night, is 
considerably sobered by the situation, but I think in each 
■ House they are anxious that action be inaugurated looking 
to hostilities. The situation is very awkward. Spain, by 
reason of the rescinding of the reconcentration order and 
the application of $600,000 to care for the suffering, has 
taken the humanitarian motive quite out of the question, and 
men who have been for war at all events, but have been 
putting it on the ground of humanity, now find that they 
must seek other grounds. They have been declaring that 
they did not propose to go to war on account of the destruc- 
tion of the Maine, and now that seems to be the real ground 
on which they must proceed, if they can bring this at all 
within any international rules. It is impossible to say to-day 
what will take place Monday, and the President may not get 
his message ready so as to send it in Monday, perhaps Tues- 
day. I think I know pretty nearly as well as any one the 
President's mind, but I do not know precisely what he is 
going to say or do. I think he is still deliberating. There 
is not any very logical ground for a declaration of war, and 



Free Cuba 277 

those who have been most eager for it are casting about 
for reasons to give for it. 

On April 6th, again writing Mr. Flagg, Senator Piatt 
said: 

As I telegraphed you this morning, I think the hope of a 
peaceful solution is pretty much gone. The Foreign Rela- 
tions Committee seems to have made up its mind in advance 
of the message and at the present moment is writing per- 
haps a resolution which will recognize the independence of 
Cuba, and, counting on the destruction of the Maine, which, 
it says, was either a criminal act or negligence equally crimi- 
nal on the part of Spain, the barbarous and inhuman warfare, 
and its inability to maintain a government on the island, 
demands the withdrawal of its troops, and authorizes the 
President to use the military and naval forces of the United 
States including the militia to that end. A good many of 
us believe the recognition of independence is entirely un- 
necessary and would like something in the way of a reso- 
lution which will give Spain an opportunity to back down 
before actual hostiHties are begun on our part. But 
the war party is evidently in the majority and will push 
its views thinking that no one dare stand up against it. 
While I say this it must be added that the Foreign Relations 
Committee is not unanimous in insisting on the recognition 
of independence and it is possible that by to-morrow that 
feature may be dropped. It is said that the message is not 
likely to go to the Senate before three or four o'clock to- 
morrow afternoon. It will be referred to the Committee 
I think without debate and no report will be made by the 
Committee until Thursday. The reason for this delay until 
late in the afternoon is that our consuls may have time to 
get away from Havana and the island. The Fern has 
been ordered to bring them away. There seems to be a 
question whether, if this resolution should pass in the form 
which the Foreign Relations Committee now contemplate, 
it would be equivalent to a declaration of war or whether 



2 78 Orville H. Piatt 

it would be the duty of the President first to communicate 
the demands contained in the resolution to Spain and get an 
answer from Spain before the commencement of actual 
hostilities. 

I have given you in a few words I think the situation. 
There will I hope be a conference to-night between the 
Committee on Foreign Relations and the President in the 
hope that the resolution to be reported may be in accordance 
with his views, but Foraker has seemed to dominate the 
Committee and any change will have to be over his head. 

On April yth, he further wrote Mr. Flagg, as follows : 

There is really no change in the situation to-day ; unless 
Spain between now and Monday gives assurances that she 
will give up Cuba, Congress will take some action in- 
sisting upon that as the only condition of peace. The 
precise character of the resolution is understood. The 
President and those who sustain him do not want a recog- 
nition of independence, do not want any haste, but a simple 
resolution directing the President to take at once such 
steps as may be necessary to terminate hostilities in Cuba, 
to form a stable government there, and to this end to em- 
ploy the land and naval forces of the United States. Jingoes 
want independence and intervention. The contest between 
the President and his opposers will go along this line. Yester- 
day we could have passed such a resolution as we desired 
in the Senate, but the startling dispatch of Lee upset 
everyone. To-day we are looking up again — to-morrow 
we may be demoralized. It is comparatively quiet here. 

The message came in on April nth. Resolutions 
were promptly reported in Senate and House. Those re- 
ported in the House followed the moderate lines of the 
President's message. They directed the President 
to intervene at once to stop the war in Cuba : 

To the end and with the purpose of securing permanent 
peace and order there, and establishing by the free action 



Free Cuba 279 

of the people thereof a stable and independent government 
of their own in the island of Cuba, 

and authorized the President to use the land and 
naval forces to execute the purpose of the resolution. 
This phraseology did not meet the requirements of 
those who insisted that Congress should demand, with- 
out equivocation, the expulsion of Spain from Cuba. 
The resolutions reported as a substitute by the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations were longer and had 
a fighting edge : 

Whereas the abhorrent conditions which have existed 
for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near 
our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people 
of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian 
civilization, culminating, as they have, in the destruction 
of a United States battleship, with 226 of its officers and 
crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and 
can not longer be endured, as has been set forth by the 
President of the United States in his message to Congress 
of April II, 1898, upon which the action of Congress was 
invited; Therefore, 

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives 
of the United States of America in Congress assembled. 

First: That the people of the island of Cuba are, and of 
right ought to be, free and independent. 

Second: That it is the duty of the United States to demand 
and the Government of the United States does hereby 
demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish 
its authority and government in the island of Cuba, and 
withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban 
waters. 

Third: That the President of the United States be, and 
he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire 
land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into 
the actual service of the United States the militia of the 



28o Orville H. Piatt 

several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry 
these resolutions into effect. 

A minority of the Committee, consisting of three 
Democrats and Senator Foraker, proposed to amend 
the first paragraph by inserting after the word "inde- 
pendent" the following: 

And that the Government of the United States hereby 
recognize the republic of Cuba as the true and lawful gover- 
ment of that island. 

There at once arose a spirited debate wherein bitter 
attacks were made upon the motives of the administra- 
tion. A little band of ten Republicans, headed by 
Chandler and Foraker, stood out with the Democrats 
and Populists for the minority amendment, and that 
amendment was adopted by a vote of 51 to 37. The 
entire debate turned on this question. The real 
question of peace and war, contained in the second 
paragraph, was quite lost sight of — even to the point 
where the House concurred in the Senate resolutions 
with an amendment striking out the words, "are and" 
in the first paragraph and the entire clause embody- 
ing the recognition of the insurgent government. Sen- 
ator Piatt entered earnestly into the debate. On April 
1 6th, he delivered one of the strongest and most impres- 
sive speeches of his entire career in opposition to the 
proposed amendment. 

In beginning the speech he said: 

The time for oratory and impassioned utterance has 
passed. The time has never been for hot words, for epi- 
thets, for intemperate speech. Oratory will not bombard 
Morro Castle. Stinging words, ungracious and unjust 
epithets may reach and wound the President of the United 
States but they will not pierce the armor of Spanish battle- 
ships. 



Free Cuba 281 

His concluding words were : 

We ought to pass resolutions here which we can justify. 
We ought not to give our consent to resolutions unjustifi- 
able in their character, for the reason that we desire to ac- 
complish the great purpose in view. When Abraham 
Lincoln put his name to that immortal document which 
struck the shackles from the limbs of 4,000,000 people, 
after having suffered abuse, vituperation, vihfication which 
the abuse heaped upon President McKinley does not 
parallel, he wrote these magnificent words: 

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice warranted by the Constitution upon military 
necessity, I invoke the deliberate judgment of mankind 
and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 

Mr. President, I implore, I adjure the Senate to pass 
no resolutions upon which it may not write in spirit, if not 
in fact, the words: 

"And upon this act we invoke the deliberate judgment 
of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 

The resolutions as amended were adopted by the 
Senate by vote of 67 to 21, Mr. Piatt helping to form 
the minority which consisted of 19 Republicans and 
2 Democrats, and after a day and night of intense 
dramatic interest, the House, in the early morning of 
April 19th, accepted the Senate resolutions word for 
word. They were signed by the President on April 
2ist, and war was on. 

After the passage of the resolutions Senator Piatt 
dictated — exactly for what purpose does not appear — 
the following statement which may be taken as an 
epitome of his position : 

These resolutions mean too little or too much. If they 
do not mean that there is now in the island of Cuba a free 
and independent government, then to whom is Spain to 



282 Orville H. Piatt 

relinquish its authority and government? And when it 
has been compelled to withdraw its land and naval forces, 
what then ? The President has asked that he be empowered 
to take measures after the securing of the full and final ter- 
mination of hostilities, to secure the establishment of a stable 
government, etc. These resolutions refuse to grant him 
that authority. Under these resolutions it will be the duty 
of the President to withdraw the forces simultaneously with 
the forces of Spain. If there is no government recognized 
by these resolutions, except the government of Spain, we 
should certainly see that one is established before our troops 
are withdrawn. If there is one, certainly nothing else can 
be meant by the resolutions than that it is recognized as a 
government. I believe the legal and practical effect of the 
first resolution is to recognize the sovereignty of the pre- 
tended self-government of the insurgents. What else can 
the resolutions mean? The people are free and indepen- 
dent. Do they use these words only in the sense that they 
would apply to mankind in general ? Every one knows that 
that phrase is used to designate a free government. So 
we see clearly the purpose of these resolutions. First, — 
to do affirmatively what the President recommends us not 
to do. Second, — to refuse to do what he asks us to do — a 
most impotent conclusion as ever was. 

First I wish to state my conviction and position and to 
state it so clearly that I will not be misconstrued or mis- 
understood. The time has come when Spanish rule in 
Cuba must cease — it has been too long a record of misrule 
only. I will not pause to frame the indictment. The 
reasons why it must cease are known to all Americans and 
are set forth clearly, forcibly, and patriotically in the 
message of the President of the United States. It has 
imperilled our peace, it has inflicted injuries upon us, it is 
inconsistent with our commercial and national interests, 
it outrages every sentiment of mankind, it makes against 
all civilization. It must end. With this conviction and 
this unassailable purpose I have hoped and, until recently, 



Free Cuba 283 

believed that it might be ended without war, without the 
burdens and horrors and the losses of war. I believe 
to-day that what I, together with all America's citizens, 
desired might have been accomplished peaceably had it not 
been for the intemperate and inflammatory statements and 
misstatements of those who from the first have desired to 
plunge this country into war. I have not been among those 
who desired war. I would if possible have averted it, 
never for a moment losing sight of the purpose to be ac- 
complished. And I have only unstinted praise to bestow 
upon, and the heartiest thanks to give to the President of 
the United States, in the execution of the great responsibil- 
ity that has desired the attainment of the end in view 
through peace rather than through war. To longer hope 
that the Spanish misrule in Cuba can be ended peaceably 
seems to be against hope. From the position taken by the 
President of the United States upon the failure of diplomatic 
negotiation? to secure the emancipation of Cuba, the United 
States cannot recede, ought not to recede. 

In the language of the Executive: "The war in Cuba must 
stop, and in that island there must be established a stable 
government, capable of maintaining order," etc. 

If this, our determination, results in war, it must come. 
We should be false to ourselves and to humanity, to the 
world, and recreant to duty and cowardly, if we hesitated 
or faltered now. 



CHAPTER XXII 

EXPANSION AND IMPERIALISM 

For Unrelenting Prosecution of the War — Results of the War 
Accepted — Annexation of Hawaii — Urges Retention of Philip- 
pines — Letter to President McKinley — Letter to Professor 
Fisher — Strongly Advocates Ratification of Treaty of Peace — 
Speech of December 19, 1899 — The Constitutional Right of 
the U. S. to Acquire and Govern Territory. 

ADMIRAL SAMPSON'S fleet set sail for Cuba on 
April 2ist, and with that act of war there came 
an end to divergent policies in Washington. Hence- 
forward there was only one party and that party was 
bent on prosecuting the war to a successful issue. For 
the next four months while the American forces were 
pressing the enemy by land and by sea we find Senator 
Piatt lending his encouragement by voice and vote. 
He accepted heartily all the results of the war. When 
the news came on the second of May that Dewey had 
sailed with flaming guns into Manila Bay, he was not 
one of those who tempered praise of American valor 
with censure of a sailor's rashness and sent up prayers 
that our ships should be recalled. Having set out in the 
path he would follow it to the end. The depths of his 
nature were stirred. The opening up of the Philip- 
pines to American civilization appealed to him as a 
religious opportunity which it would be a national crime 
to neglect. Even while the war was still on, and before 

Sampson's fleet had destroyed Cervera's ships off San- 

284 



Expansion and Imperialism 285 

tiago, the question of expansion came to the front 
in resolutions providing for the annexation of the 
Hawaiian Islands. This was a question which had been 
inherited by the McKinley administration. From the 
time in February, 1892, when President Harrison had 
sent the treaty of the annexation to the Senate down 
through the unfortunate experiences of the Cleveland 
administration with "Paramount" Blount, and his 
great and good friend, Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian 
question had developed into one of party policy, al- 
though a few eminent and powerful Republicans had 
ranged themselves strongly against the idea of acquiring 
insular territory. Senator Piatt had little patience 
with the position assumed by the reactionaries who 
chirped assent to Speaker Reed's motto — "Empire 
can wait." In the second session of the Fifty-third 
Congress resolutions had been presented in the Senate 
looking to the pacification of the Sandwich Islands. 
One of the paragraphs of the resolutions declared "that 
it is unwise and inexpedient under existing conditions 
to consider at this time any project of annexation of 
the Hawaiian territory to the United States." Senator 
Piatt favored the general import of the resolutions as 
did many other Republican Senators but to this declara- 
tion he refused to subscribe. He made his position 
clear in a brief speech on January 24, 1894. He said: 

I do not believe that the annexation of the Hawaiian 
Islands to the United States would violate either the pro- 
claimed or the traditional policy of the United States. 
I believe on the other hand it would be consonant with and 
in accord with both the proclaimed and the traditional 
pohcy of the United States. I believe it would be in direct 
line with all that has been said by Presidents and Secretaries 
of State in reference to this subject for the last fifty years. I 



286 Orville H. Piatt 

believe it would be in direct line with all the movements for 
annexation which have taken place heretofore in our his- 
tory. I believe when we have come to be sixty-five — yes, 
seventy million people, nearly, we can no longer shut our- 
selves within narrow limits ; and while I have no disposition 
to acquire territory for the sake of territory, for the sake of 
aggrandizement or glory or power, I firmly believe that 
when any territory outside of the present limits of the 
United States becomes necessary for our defence or essential 
for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time 
in acquiring it, if it can be done without injustice to other 
nations and other people. 

From this position he never swerved. When the 
resolutions of annexation came before the Senate in 
the summer of 1898 he voted for them and aided in the 
debate against those who argued for purposes of delay 
that the business should be undertaken by treaty 
instead of legislative action ; and when a little later the 
far more momentous question of acquiring the Philip- 
pine Islands during the negotiations of the treaty of 
peace with Spain became absorbing, Senator Piatt was 
one who insisted most stoutly that for the United 
States to abandon the Philippines w^ould be a colossal 
error, to be regretted forever. 

The protocol looking to the treaty which brought the 
war to an end was approved at Madrid on August 1 1 , 
1898. The air was full of rumors that in drafting a 
treaty of peace the administration would agree to with- 
draw American forces from the Philippines and leave 
them again in the hands of Spain. That it was the 
inclination of the President at that time to accept just 
as few responsibilities as possible in the far East was well 
understood. In theory that may have been the wisest 
position for an administration to assume. But it was 



Expansion and Imperialism 287 

not in harmony with the feehng of the people of the 
United States. The most clear-headed and far-seeing 
leaders of Congress perceived that the fact was already 
in effect accomplished — that responsibilities already 
assumed could not be evaded. Senator Piatt's repu- 
tation for conservatism and strength proved of vast 
importance at this crisis. Others clustered about him 
as about an oak. He did not waver from the beginning 
in his conviction that the United States should retain 
control of the entire Philippine group. The arguments 
of the anti-imperialists seemed to him preposterous — 
almost lacking in patriotism. At the time of the 
signing of the protocol, Congress was in recess and he 
was at his home in Connecticut, close in touch there 
with the heart of his own people. It was a time, he 
thought, for communicating to President McKinley his 
judgment of what should be done and he acted un- 
hesitatingly. Under date of August 15, 1898, from 
his home in Washington, Connecticut, he wrote as 
follows : 

Dear Mr. President: 

I feel that I ought to say that during the past week I have 
been well over the State of Connecticut and I am satisfied 
that nine tenths of the people of the State have an intense 
feeling that we should insist upon the cession of all the 
Philippine Islands. Those who believe in Providence, see, 
or think they see, that God has placed upon this Govern- 
ment the solemn duty of providing for the people of these 
islands a government based upon the principle of liberty 
no matter how many difficulties the problem may present. 
They feel that it is our duty to attempt its solution. Among 
Christian, thoughtful people the sentiment is akin to that 
which has maintained the missionary work of the last 
century in foreign lands. I assure you that it is difficult to 
overestimate the strength and intensity of this sentiment. 



288 Orville H. Piatt 

If in the negotiations for peace Spain is permitted to retain 
any portion of the Philippines it will be regarded as a failure 
on the part of this nation to discharge the greatest moral 
obligation which could be conceived. 

I have spoken of the Christian sentiment but the feeling 
that we should not allow Spain to retain possession of the 
Philippines pervades all classes of our people. If I am to 
be guided by the views of the best people in this State and 
the large majority of all the people, I shall be compelled 
to vote against any treaty which allows Spain to continue 
to exercise sovereignty over any of the inhabitants of 
those islands. 

Very respectfully, 

O. H. Platt. 

In this brief letter to the President was condensed 
the entire argument for retaining the Philippines. It 
was the expression of a statesman of deep religious 
feeling, firmly confident that he was reading rightly the 
pulse of the people and reassured to know that their 
settled judgment coincided with his own. In all the 
months and years of debate that followed the signing of 
the treaty of peace, no really convincing argument was 
advanced, the germ of which was not contained in those 
few pregnant sentences. Senator Platt himself sub- 
sequently elaborated his position both in personal 
letters and congressional debate, but never more 
effectively. 

He seems to have been stimulated by the anti- 
expansion sentiment which found grateful nurseries 
under the elms of New Haven and in the college yard 
of Cambridge. The Yale College band of anti-ex- 
pansionists was especially dogmatic and self-assertive. 
Mr. Piatt's personal relations with the leading members 
of the Yale faculty had always been close and friendly, 



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aC /i^/~-Mi^ J ia^l ^^ ^^'^ /^Ci- aL i^^^:^3Y 

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Auy -M^/ /%.aX iX £y/ ^^^ /z^i^ 7^ oL-^if-^a^^/ 6^ 

FACSIMILE OF LETTER TO PRESIDENT MCKINLEY CONCERNING THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



^ ^/t^ Lu/j-u(d^ iXi^/ £caZ^ i^li.^ a.U<^-Ydi 



Expansion and Imperialism 289 

and therefore he was peculiarly the object of their 
missionary zeal. From one of the most eminent of 
them, George P. Fisher, Professor of Ecclesiastical His- 
tory in the Theological Department, he received, only 
three days prior to his communication with President 
McKinley, an argumentative letter against the reten- 
tion of the Philippines. The immediate response to this 
was the luminous note to McKinley; and a few days 
later he disturbed his well earned summer's rest to write 
a long and comprehensive letter to Professor Fisher, 
which, as a contemporary document throwing light on 
the forces at work to determine the issue of an historic 
time, may profitably be reproduced here : 

I have yours of the twelfth instant, and I think so much 
of your opinion that I want, if I can, to outline briefly the 
reasons which induce me to think we ought to insist on 
American control of the Philippines. 

First, — ^There is no sovereignty there to-day but ours. 
Spain in surrendering Manila has lost her sovereignty and 
cannot regain it unless we give it to her. We did not 
covet or seek possession of the islands; that has come to 
us in the course of events we did not foresee and which 
we were powerless to control. When as a necessary step 
in the war with Spain orders were sent to destroy the 
Spanish ships, there was never a thought of acquisition; 
Providence foreshaped the events which forced upon us the 
question, what should be done with those islands ? If we 
had withdrawn our fleet after the Spanish ships were de- 
stroyed, the insurgents with whom wisely or unwisely we 
were acting in concert, would have been abandoned to the 
mercy of the Spanish. In a certain sense they were our 
allies. We had espoused their contest for liberty such 
as it was. If from a humanitarian standpoint we were im- 
pelled to assist Cuban insurgents, we could not in decency 
abandon the Philippine insurgents. If this was a war for 
19 



290 Orville H. Piatt 

humanity, Spain's inhumanity in the Philippines was as 
flagrant as in Cuba. If you say Cuba was nearer, the 
answer is plain — the duty of succoring the oppressed is not 
hmited by distance — only by present ability to afford it, 
and we were there and able to discharge that duty. If it 
had been in our power to succor Armenia, we should not 
have withheld aid because of the distance. We did not 
withdraw — we accepted the consequences of our first step, 
we are there, in control, in real occupation and authority 
and charged with all the responsibility and obligation that 
comes with that occupation and authority. What then 
shall we do? 

Second, — ^There are several things we may do. We might 
have relinquished all we had gained, given up all claim to 
authority, ignored all demands of duty and all sense of 
obligation ; left Spain and the insurgents to fight it out. But 
is there any one in the world who thinks we ought to have 
done that? The mere suggestion brings a blush of shame 
to the cheek of every American. But we cannot do that. 
The procotol provides that we are to keep the bay and port 
of Manila. That is settled. From that we cannot recede. 
We have already stipulated for and secured more than a 
coaling or naval station. We have acquired that much 
territory and we must hold and govern it. 

Shall we then let Spain repossess a portion of the island 
of Luzon and all other islands and sit by indifferently while 
the conflict between Spain and her revolted people goes on, 
careless spectators of results, assenting to her cruelty, 
injustice, and oppression if Spain succeeds, assenting to 
universal loot and plunder perhaps, if the insurgents suc- 
ceed, powerless to interfere? I cannot but believe that to 
allow Spain to retain any portion of those islands would be 
to invite endless complication, trouble, and conflict. Re- 
member that Spanish authority and Spanish sovereignty 
are of the past. Shall we invite other powers, England, 
Germany, Russia, or France, any or all of them, to take our 
possessions off our hands because we are in doubt how best 



Expansion and Imperialism 291 

to deal with them? Think of the friction which that would 
surely create. Manila now is the port of commerce of all 
the islands, it flows into and out of that port naturally. 
Any other nation possessing the rest of the islands would 
seek to divert the commerce to a port of its own. We 
should seek to retain it and bad blood would at once be 
stirred up. But as I have before said, we are in control 
now. By conquest all the Philippines are ours unless we 
relinquish them. Are we not then under the most impera- 
tive moral obligation to protect that people and establish 
there such a government as is best adapted to their need 
and condition? If they are entitled by Divine endowment 
to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are we not 
bound to protect them in their enjoyment so far as it may 
be done? Who can do it better than we? Who can do it 
so well? Shall we deliberately shirk the duty because we 
fear that its performance may be attended with difficulty? 

Third, — We of this country have always asserted our 
fiiTn belief in an overruling Providence. We have pro- 
fessed to recognize the hand of God in history. Does not 
Providence, does not the finger of God unmistakably point 
to the civilization and uplifting of the Orient, to the develop- 
ment of its people, to the spread of liberty, education, 
social order, and Christianity there through the agency of 
American influence? Can any man, even the least thought- 
ful, fail to see that the next great world wave of civilization 
is to overspread China, and how much that means? What 
kind of civilization is it to be, Russian, German, French? 
Or shall it be the civilization of the English-speaking people, 
led indeed by the United States? 

Fourth, — So far as to duty, in this case duty and interest 
coincide. American civilization and institutions will go 
only where our trade goes — "Trade follows the flag" — 
civilization goes along with trade. The missionary may 
be the pioneer of civilization but he works at a terrible 
disadvantage amid the institutions of heathenism. Com- 
merce clothes the missionary with power. 



292 Orville H. Piatt 

We must stand with England or England stand with us 
for "the open door" in China. Neither can keep the door 
open alone. Combined, the rest of the world is powerless 
to shut it. Can you fail to see that in the Providence of 
God the time has come when the institutions of the English- 
speaking people are in final conflict with the institutions of 
despotism and irreligion, and that China is the battle 
ground? The nations that control the commerce of China 
will impress their institutions upon that people. Have 
we no call to that conflict? Again we can only be truly 
great as we reach out beyond ourselves. Selfishness is 
poverty and misery both. To lose a man's life is to save it, 
and this is as true of a nation as of a man. The national 
policy of isolation is no longer for our best interest. To 
pursue it with all that is claimed for it by its advocates is 
national selfishness. When we were weak in numbers and in 
resources it was a good policy, but a nation of seventy-five 
millions of people, greater in resources and power than any 
other nation, can no longer, in justice to itself or humanity, 
insist on isolation. We are first in the family of nations; the 
head of the family has no right to disclaim an interest in 
the welfare of the other members. If we are to let our 
light shine as you say, must we not carry it where it can be 
seen? Is it quite enough to have a statue of liberty en- 
lightening the world at the entrance of New York harbor ? 

Speaking in a selfish and materialistic sense, no nation can 
be great in the truest sense until it takes its full share of the 
commerce of the world, till it is as strong on the sea as on 
the land. With commerce come riches and power and true 
greatness as well as the opportunity to benefit the world. 

Shall we reach out beyond ourselves, shall we go forward 
or stand still ? If we would maintain ourselves in the front 
rank we must go forward. We must claim and secure our 
fair share of the opening trade of the East. With the Philip- 
pines we are in a position to demand it, without them we 
have no advantage of position, and can be easily ignored. 
With Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines we have three 



Expansion and Imperialism 293 

almost equidistant stations on the shortest route which 
any nation has to China with its trade now marvellously 
to expand. 

Fifth, — But why can we not Americanize the Philippines? 
Is American enterprise and influence limited in these days 
of steam and electricity by the distance between us and 
them? Have we not Americanized the Sandwich Islands 
where we had no government control, and were they not 
weeks farther away from us when our missionaries first 
went there than the Philippines now are? Are we not 
nearer to the Philippines now than we were to London in the 
days of the Revolution? Nearer than we were to California 
in 1840? Are the Filipinos more barbarous, savage, and 
untamable than were the Sandwich Islanders? Have they 
not at least shown a longing for liberty as they understand 
it, when they have thus maintained this warfare against 
Spanish misrule and injustice? Nor can I understand why 
it is supposed to be necessary to incorporate them into our 
political community in any dangerous sense. 

Has England incorporated South Africa into its political 
community? In a certain sense it has, but only in the 
sense that it exercises control and provides for the people 
that come under its sway a better government than they 
ever enjoyed otherwise, and the government best calculated 
for their happiness, freedom, and development. The 
Philippines would belong to us rather than become part of 
us. We should govern them or see that they were governed, 
and if we discharge our duty to them in that respect as 
we should, it will be to their incalculable benefit. The 
idea that we cannot under our system acquire or possess 
any country, territory, or even island of the sea unless we 
intend to admit our acquisition to the full privilege of 
statehood has, in my mind, no foundation to rest upon. If 
our own defence, our necessary development, or real in- 
terest requires us to take other territory, we should take it 
and then proceed to govern it in the best possible way. 
Canada and Australia are instances of what such communi- 



294 Orville H. Piatt 

ties might in the lapse of years become without any detri- 
ment to our system. I would not acquire for the sake of 
mere acquisition or aggrandizement, nor would I on the 
other hand refuse to do what duty or national interest may 
require. 

"New occasions teach new duties" and I cannot help 
the conviction that the United States is called by Provi- 
dence to a great work for mankind — that each ship in Manila 
Bay was a new M ay flower steering boldly through the 
winter sea, the harbinger and agent of a new civilization for 
lands where its beneficent influences have been unfelt and 
unknown. 

Pardon my enthusiasm. I am so full of the idea that 
I cannot write or look upon the situation tamely. 

The unerring logic of Senator Piatt's contention was 
fully justified by the event. When the peace envoys 
came to consider, on the ground and face to face with 
real conditions, what should be done with the Philip- 
pines it was found, as the wiser statesmen of that day 
had foreseen, that there could be no sure way of a last- 
ing peace except through an agreement that the United 
States should continue to hold the islands where Spain's 
sovereignty had been dethroned. 

It was not in the books, however, that the conclusions 
of the peace commission should be accepted by the 
Senate without question. The anti-imperialists kept 
on smiting the air with a fury which was in inverse 
ratio to their number and influence. The ablest of 
their number in the Senate, the one whose utterances 
commanded the most respect, was George F. Hoar of 
Massachusetts. Speaker Reed in the House also con- 
tributed the influence of his great position and prestige, 
with a biting wit which in another cause might have 
been compelling. It was a source of grief to Senator 



Expansion and Imperialism 295 

Piatt that on this question which he regarded as vital 
he should be obliged to take issue with Senator Hoar, 
long esteemed by him as a personal friend as well as 
one of the ablest and purest men in public life. But 
having set his hand to the plough he could not turn back 
— considerations of friendship must yield to demands 
of public duty. Various resolutions were introduced 
by Senators who believed that the United States should 
not retain control of the Philippines. The passage of 
any one of them would have resulted in placing the 
United States Government in a false position in the 
event of the ratification of the treaty and might even 
have evidenced a feeling in the Senate which would 
have caused the treaty's defeat. The mere discussion 
of them watered the seed of insurrection in Luzon. For 
a time at the beginning of the session the "Antis" 
seemed to be having things their own way. Senator 
Vest of Missouri on December 6th introduced the fol- 
lowing resolution, which opened up an opportunity for 
debate : 

Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives 
of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
That under the Constitution of the United States no power 
is given to the Federal Government to acquire territory to 
be held and governed permanently as colonies. 

The colonial system of European nations cannot be 
established under our present Constitution, but all territory 
acquired by the Government, except such small amount 
as may be necessary for coaling stations, correction of 
boundaries, and similar governmental purposes, must be 
acquired and governed with the purpose of ultimately 
organizing such territory into States suitable for admission 
into the Union. 

Upon this declaration the anti-imperialists took their 



296 Orville H. Piatt 

stand. Vest, Hoar, and others delivered speeches which 
were undeniably able and plausible. It remaiiied for 
Piatt to voice the opinion of the administration, the 
majority of the Senate, and of the overwhelming ma- 
jority of the American people. On December 19th, 
he took the floor to present an argument in opposition 
to the Vest resolution which was to serve as a text-book 
for all who came after him. He said in the beginning: 

I do not propose to discuss the so-called policy of expan- 
sion nor the features of a government which we may 
authorize or establish in any territory which we may ac- 
quire. I will simply remark, in passing, that expansion has 
been the law of our national growth ; more than that, it has 
been the great law of our racial development, and the United 
States has shown a capacity for government in all trying 
times and under all trying conditions, and has shown that 
it is equal to any circumstances which may arise. ... I 
propose to maintain that the United States is a nation ; that 
as a nation it possesses every sovereign power not reserved 
in its Constitution to the States or the people; that the 
right to acquire territory was not reserved and is there- 
fore an inherent sovereign right; that it is a right upon 
which there is no limitation and in regard to which there 
is no qualification; that in certain instances the right 
may be inferred from specific clauses in the Constitution, 
but that it exists independent of these clauses; that in 
the right to acquire territory is found the right to govern 
it, and as the right to govern is a sovereign right, not limited 
in the Constitution; and that these propositions are in ac- 
cordance with the views of the framers of the Constitution, 
the decisions of the Supreme Court, and the legislation of 
Congress. 



'^to^ 



It is to be regretted that the limitations of this work 
forbid the reproduction here of this speech in its en- 



Expansion and Imperialism 297 

tirety. It was profound, and comprehensive, packed 
with citations from the debates on the Constitution, 
from decisions of the Supreme Court, and from the ac- 
tual experience of the United States in the acquisition 
and control of territory. Some of his most fruitful sen- 
tences were in the form of replies to questions put by 
Senators on the opposing side. In response to Allen 
of Nebraska he declared: 

I do not think there is any limitation upon our power to 
acquire territory. 

And again : 

I do not believe there is any obligation on this govern- 
ment to give to people who may inhabit territory which we 
may acquire the right to self-government until such time 
as we think they are fit to exercise it ; and that is the doctrine 
we have always maintained in dealing with the territory 
acquired. 

He expressed his agreement with Daniel Webster 
that Congress : 

may establish any such government and any such laws 
in the territories as in its discretion it may see fit. It is 
subject of course to the rules of justice and propriety but 
it is under no constitutional restraints. 

But the sentence by which this speech will be longest 
remembered — a sentence that filled the souls of the 
" Antis " with rage and for a time concentrated upon its 
author the venom of their attacks — was in reply to a 
question put by Mr. Hoar. Consumed as he thought 
with the fire of patriotism, Hoar had listened with 
ill-concealed impatience through the greater part of 
Piatt's speech and then he arose. This colloquy 
followed : 



298 Orville H. Piatt 

Mr. Hoar: May I ask the Senator from Connecticut one 
question at this point? 

Mr. Platt: Certainly. 

Mr. Hoar: It is whether, in his opinion, governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed? 

The trembling voice with which the aged Massachu- 
setts Senator put this question betrayed the tenseness 
of his feeling. It was the conclusive, damning appeal 
to the Declaration of Independence which was so 
conspicuous a feature of the anti-imperialist propa- 
ganda, and when Senator Platt replied with quiet 
emphasis, " From the consent of some of the governed," 
there was a gasp of dismay. Then Senator Platt went 
on to explain : " The State of Massachusetts governs 
people who cannot read and write, and it governs them 
pretty effectually too. If they commit any crime, it 
punishes them, but it does not allow them to vote," He 
did not deny the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence but pointed out that all sorts of qualifica- 
tions for voting had been adopted in the United States : 

There are 250,000 American citizens within five miles 
of the spot where I stand. They are governed by Congress, 
Not one of them can vote. His consent is not asked. The 
government in the District of Columbia certainly does not 
depend upon the consent of the governed. Does the Senator 
from Massachusetts hold that this provision for governing 
the District of Columbia, exercised under that clause of the 
Constitution which says that Congress shall have exclusive 
jurisdiction of ten miles square in the District of Columbia, 
is a violation of the doctrine of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, that all governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed? Does he hold that that is a 
violation of the principle for which we contended when 
we revolted and severed our connection with Great Britain, 



Expansion and Imperialism 299 

because there was taxation without representation? Oh, 
no, Mr. President. In his fear and doubt the Senator from 
Massachusetts sees Hons in the path that are not there ; if we 
go straight forward, though it may be the Hill of Difficulty, 
we shall find that the Hons at least are chained, and we shall 
arrive at the House Beautiful. 

In conclusion, I cannot understand either the sentiment 
or the motive of those who are unwilling to concede that our 
Government is a nation, and who fear to see it clothed with 
every element of sovereignty which a nation should possess 
and does possess. 

Why should any man, why, especially, should any Sena- 
tor, wish to detract from, to diminish or belittle the power 
of his government ? Why strive by subtle, metaphysical, and 
logic-chopping arguments to hamper its operations and 
circumscribe its province? Rather should we in our 
national love rejoice to see it invested with strength. 
Rather should we bid it Godspeed in its mission to relieve 
the oppressed, to right every wrong, and to extend the 
institutions of free government. For this is the people's 
government; the government of a great people, a liberty- 
loving people, a people that can be trusted to do right and 
to guarantee to all men who shall come under its beneficent 
sway and be subject to its jurisdiction the largest measure 
of liberty consistent with good order and their general 
well-being. 

Rather let us have faith in the Government, faith in its 
future. Stilled be the voice of timidity and distrust, 
stilled be the utterance of captious and carping criticism. 
Let us have faith that the powers of Government will never 
be unrighteously exercised. Like Lincoln, when he met 
the contention that the Government had no power adequate 
to its self-preservation, let us turn from disputatious 
subtleties and "have faith that right makes might, and in 
that faith dare to do our duty as we understand it." In 
that faith the mountains of doubt will be removed and the 
way of duty become straight and plain. 



300 Orville H. Piatt 

Little more than a century has passed since from the 
tower of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, when we sev- 
ered our connection with Great Britain, the Liberty Bell 
rang out the message, "Proclaim liberty throughout the 
land and to all the inhabitants thereof, " We were small 
and weak then. Timid doubters said there was a lion in the 
path, but the spirit of the Constitution was in that message. 
With that Constitution came nationality and sovereignty. 
Under that Constitution, in the name and by the power of 
the nation, liberty has been proclaimed to regions never 
dreamed of by the fathers. Is it for us now, when we have 
become great and strong, though timid doubters still say 
there are lions in the path, to declare that neither in the 
spirit of the Constitution nor by the exercise of national 
sovereignty can we proclaim liberty a rood or a foot beyond 
our present territorial limits? Oh! for the faith and the 
courage of the fathers! 

From that day less and less was heard in the long 
drawn out discussion about the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and " the consent of the governed." Senator 
Piatt had effectually punctured the bubble of that 
particular argument against the acquisition of the 
Philippines.^ 

1 On October ii, 1899, Mr. Piatt delivered an address on "Ex- 
pansion" before the Union League Club of Brooklyn, from which 
the following excerpts are taken: 

"Very strange as it seems to me, there are some persons who 
think we ought to abandon or surrender our new possessions, but 
there is nothing in the history of our development to justify the 
expectation that when the United States has once acquired terri- 
tory, it will ever give it away, barter, or sell it, or surrender it to 
armed force. There can be no distinction drawn between Porto 
Rico, the Philippines, or the smaller islands in this respect. Rather 
does our whole history show that with every acquisition of territory 
we have fully recognized our obligation to provide good government 
therein, government by which the rights of the people are respected 
and their best interests promoted. We have never plundered or 
misgoverned new territorj^ and we never shall. We have never 



Expansion and Imperialism 301 

oppressed the people in new territory, nor shall we do so now. To 
allege that we irtend to misgovern or oppress in our new possessions 
is to slander our Government, and I can think of no :nore atrocious 
slander than that. All this newly acquired territory belongs to 
the United States, and we are going to keep it, provide for it with 
the best possible government, and immeasurably benefit its people. 
It has been acquired by conquest and treaty. The treaty which 
confirmed the conquest is the supreme law of the land, and the 
performance of every obligation specified or involved in that treaty 
is as truly a national duty as the execution of any law upon 
our statute books. ... I really have not discovered the anti- 
imperialist who urges constitutional objections respecting the ac- 
quisition of Porto Rico or feels that the Declaration of Independence 
was violated when Spain ceded it to us and we accepted it as the 
result of the war. Democratic platform makers would, like the 
ancient Augurs, be laughing in each others' faces if a plank in their 
platform should denounce the acquisition of Porto Rico alone. 
Not a soul of them would listen to a proposition to give away, sell, 
barter, or surrender that island. So I say that I find great diffi- 
culty in speaking of the Philippines as disconnected from Porto 
Rico. Our right is the same to each, our title as perfect to one as 
the other, the difficulties of administration as great in one case as the 
other, and the fact that our people as a whole are satisfied with the 
acquisition of Porto Rico shows that no one really believes there is 
anything in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution 
of the United States, or the principles upon which our Government 
is founded, which made our acquisition of the Philippines improper 
or forbids our retention of them. All of this talk about the consent 
of the governed, Filipino independence, the wickedness of sub- 
jugation, and the denial of constitutional rights to the people there, 
is simply a false issue. The thing which really troubles the few 
anti-imperialists is that they fear the United States has made a 
bad bargain. . . . All the consequences of war must be accepted 
by the nation that engages in war, and the unavoidable conse- 
quence of our triumph in Manila Bay was that we should assume 
control of the Philippine Islands; that a duty arose when the 
Spanish ships went down. Neither man nor nation can avoid 
duty and achieve just success. It is the glory of our nation that 
it has always met and performed national duty. If the war with 
Spain was, as we believed and avowed, a war for humanity, our 
obligation to Spanish subjects in the Philippines was just as great 
as to Spanish subjects in Cuba. If we were liberators in Cuba, we 
were equally so in the Philippines. The assumption of control 
in the Philippine Islands was a duty which we owed to the nations 



302 Orville H. Piatt 

of the world, to ourselves, to the inhabitants of those islands, and 
to mankind. It would have been criminal neglect to have aban- 
doned the Filipinos either to Spain or a Malay dictator. We 
emerged from our war with honor. We should have been dis- 
honored if we had shirked the obligations which that war imposed 
upon us. . . . 

"Expansion has marked every step of our national growth and 
progress. Every expansion of our territory has been in accordance 
with the irresistible law of growth. We could no more resist the 
successive expansions by which we have grown to be the strongest 
nation on earth, than a tree can resist its natural growth. The 
history of territorial expansion is the history of our nation's progress 
and glory. It is a matter to be proud of, not to lament. We 
should rejoice that Providence has given us the opportunity to 
extend our influence, our institutions, and our civilization into re- 
gions hitherto closed to us rather than contrive how we can thwart 
its designs. When Admiral Dewey was asked how he accounted 
for the fact that so little damage was done by the Spanish guns 
at Manila he is said to have replied : ' If I were a religious man, and 
I hope I am, I should say that the hand of God was in it. ' Your 
own Dr. Dix said the other day in his pulpit that he felt 'that some 
unseen and mysterious power had been, and is, at work conduct- 
ing and compelling a certain end, to be accomplished by peaceful 
methods if possible, but if not peacefully then by the whole force 
of the powers of the State. ' I believe with Admiral Dewey and 
Dr. Dix, that the United States has found in its Philippine problem 
the greatest opportunity for the extension of freedom and beneficent 
government which it has ever enjoyed." 



CHAPTER XXIII 

NATIONAL DUTY 

Debate with Senator Hoar, February ii, 1902 — The Destiny 
of the Republic — Favors a Colonial System. 

ONCE more Piatt and Hoar came together on this 
question of the Phihppines. It was during the 
long continued debate on the PhiHppine tariff in 
the session of 190 1-2, when the entire question of 
the retention of the archipelago was lugged into the 
discussion. Aguinaldo was in captivity, and the guerilla 
bands who had been resisting American authority in the 
islands were rapidly disappearing so that American 
military forces, no longer needed to preserve order, 
were gradually withdrawing and the islands were 
approaching a condition of permanent peace. But the 
anti-imperialist propaganda in the United States was 
still busy, and it had its chief encouragement from the 
little band of in-econcilables in the Senate at Washing- 
ton. On February nth, Senator Teller had occupied 
almost the entire day in a violent assault upon the 
Government's Philippine poHcy. Toward the close of 
the afternoon he rested and Mr. Piatt took the floor 
to reply to certain criticisms of the character of our 
officials, lauding the work of the Philippine Commission, 
and dwelling upon the rapid progress of the pacification 

of the islands: 

303 



304 Orville H. Piatt 

I think [he said] if we take facts and not fancies, if 
we take things as they really are, and not as they are con- 
jured up by the party of protest and disapproval, we shall 
see that we are getting along very well in the Philippine 
Islands, and are progressing very rapidly toward a condition 
there, in which the FiHpinos themselves will have a very 
large share of participation, which will be entirely satis- 
factory to them and which they will welcome as a blessing 
to themselves and the archipelago. 

This incident would have ended there had not 
Senator Hoar undertaken to reply, disputing Piatt's 
assertions, questioning the genuineness of the elections 
which had been held in the provinces, and belittling the 
quahty of the free schools established by American 
authority. " I hope," he concluded, " the rosy view of 
my friend, the Senator from Connecticut, will turn out 
to be all right, but I confess I am afraid he will have 
to try again." 

The manner of the attack stirred Piatt to a response 
which the newspapers of the day describe as a " revival 
of the best traditions of the Senate." He regretted the 
sneers at the efforts to educate the children of the 
Philippine Islands, and then he took up the question 
of treason against the United States. He read from the 
statutes of Connecticut the law which relates to treason 
and misprision of treason and proceeded to apply it : 

As I understand that statute, Mr. President, there are 
certain persons living in the State of the. Senator from 
Massachusetts who, if they had come into the. State of 
Connecticut and commenced to carry on intercourse with 
the Filipinos with intent to aid them or to defeat or em- 
barrass the measures of the Government of the State or 
of the United States, would have subjected themselves to 
the penalty of this statute; and yet the people of Con- 



National Duty 305 

necticut have not been chafing under it. The people of 
Connecticut think that is right, and that a man who, when 
there is a rebelHon against the State or the United States, 
enters into communication with the enemy for the purpose of 
embarrassing the operations of the State or United States, 
commits a crime, and subjects himself to punishment. 

If we are a Government worthy of the name, worthy of 
living, worthy of a place in the present or the future [he 
exclaimed with fervor], wherever men take arms against 
the Government of the United States in any country, 
district, or territory where the sovereignty of the United 
States prevails, we will put down that rebellion. . . . 
No perversion of the doctrine of independence and no 
perversion of the glory of liberty is going to convince 
this American people that it is not only its right but its 
duty to itself to put down armed resistance against the 
Government wherever it may rear its hateful head. 

He compared the situation in the Philippines with the 
attitude of the South at the close of the Civil War: 

I do not want to say anything to revive the memories of 
the saddest war of recent times, but I cannot refrain from 
alluding to the fact that for four long years we resisted this 
doctrine that government in its strict and literal sense de- 
pended upon the consent of the governed, and that eleven 
States and the people of those States, claiming that they 
could not be coerced, claiming that they were struggling for 
liberty and establishing an independence of their own, for 
four long years fought that question out with us, and we 
prevailed. 

And now, if I understand, we have done the same thing 
in the Philippines. Some people over there, a few only 
compared with the great mass of people, followed the for- 
tunes of one Aguinaldo. Did he have any consent of the 
governed upon which to rely ? If the doctrine of the consent 
of the governed must be strictly enforced here, I inquire 
what consent of the governed this vaunted and eulogized 



3o6 Orville H. Piatt 

Aguinaldo had in the Philippine Islands? What right had 
he, any more than we, to demand the right to govern 
those islands? 

In all the range of his public speech there is no finer 
bit of exalted eloquence than the words with which he 
brought this unpremeditated utterance to a close: 

Talk about commercialism! Is this matter to be 
weighed by bookkeeping to see where the balance of ad- 
vantage is in dollars and cents? I think the United States 
of America has a high call to duty, to a moral duty, to 
duty to advance the cause of free government in the world 
by something more than example. It is not enough to 
say to a country over which we have acquired an undisputed 
and indisputable sovereignty: "Go your own gait; look at 
our example. In the entrance of the harbor of New York, 
our principal port, there is the statue of Liberty Enlight- 
ening the World. Look at that, and follow our example." 

No, Mr. President. When the Anglo-Saxon race crossed 
the Atlantic and stood on the shores of Massachusetts 
Bay and on Plymouth Rock that movement meant some- 
thing more than the establishment of religious and civil 
liberty within a narrow, confined, and limited compass. It 
had in it the force of the Almighty; and from that day to 
this it has been spreading, widening, and extending until, 
like the stone seen by Daniel in his vision cut out of the 
mountain without hands, it has filled all our borders, and 
ever westward across the Pacific that influence which found 
its home in the Mayflower and its development on Plymouth 
Rock has been extending and is extending its sway and its 
beneficence. 

I beHeve, Mr. President, that the time is coming, as surely 
coming as the time when the world shall be Christianized, 
when the world shall be converted to the cause of free 
government, and I beHeve the United States is a provi- 
dentially appointed agent for that purpose. The day may be 



National Duty 307 

long in coming and it may be in the far future, but he who 
has studied the history of this western world from the twenty- 
second day of December, 1620, to the present hour must be 
blind indeed if he cannot see that the cause of free govern- 
ment in the world is still progressing and that what the 
United States is doing in the Philippine Islands is in the 
extension of that beneficent purpose. 

He had inflicted wounds which were never to be 
healed. As he took his seat after delivering his fervid 
peroration, Senator Hoar came over and sat beside him. 
"Mr. Piatt," he said in a broken voice, "I fully ex- 
pected that somebody would say all this ; but I did n't 
think that you would be the one." From that hour 
the personal relations between the two great Senators 
were never quite as they had been before, although 
toward the end there was a restoration of kindly feel- 
ing, and Piatt's tribute to Hoar on the occasion of the 
eulogies of the latter in the Senate a few years later was 
one of the most beautiful and appropriate then spoken. 

Believing as he did in the constitutional power of 
this Government to acquire territory when and where 
it might see fit, Mr. Piatt at the same time held clearly 
defined opinions as to the manner in which such 
territory should be governed. He was unalterably 
opposed to any proposition looking to the annexation 
of non-contiguous territory with any understanding 
that it was ever to become an integral part of the 
United States, entitled to the privilege of statehood. 
This question first arose acutely in his mind with 
reference to Hawaii, after the passage of the resolution 
of annexation in the summer of 1898. We were in the 
midst of the war with Spain when our future course 
with regard to conquered territory was still unsettled, 
and he felt that in Hawaii we should proceed with 



3o8 Orville H. Piatt 

caution as establishing a possible precedent for more 
serious questions later to arise. 

He was in consultation with President McKinley on 
this subject and on July 9th, after a call at the White 
House, he wrote to the President, as follows: 

Since seeing you this morning I have thought much of 
the work of the commission to prepare a code of laws for 
Hawaii. I trust that in preparing this code of laws nothing 
will be done or agreed upon which will in any way commit 
the United States to the project of their making a state of 
the Hawaiian Islands, or incorporating them with an exist- 
ing State. It seems to me that we must now mark out our 
policy for all our future as to territory which we may conquer 
or be obliged to take, and that it should be understood that 
statehood is out of the question. 

We have Alaska now, we have Hawaii, we may have 
possessions that we conquer from Spain. We may be 
obliged either for self-defence or for our own development, to 
acquire territory elsewhere, as for instance along the route 
of the Nicaragua Canal if we ever build it. We shall need 
coaling stations, and there are various emergencies in 
which a nation like ours may be compelled to acquire ter- 
ritory. In saying this I am far from being what is called 
an "expansionist," but I recognize the fact that we can 
no longer shut ourselves up within our present limits. 

Our history and tradition have begotten the idea in the 
public mind that we cannot have colonies or dependencies 
except we incorporate them into our system as states. 
This will never do, and we must educate our people to under- 
stand when we acquire possessions outside of our integral ter- 
ritory that we have the right and the power, and that it is 
our duty to see that the best possible government is provided 
for such possessions, but that they have no claim to become 
states. Contrary to the general belief, sfch was the view 
of the wisest men who framed the Constitution. I merely 



National Duty 309 

speak of this now from an indefinite fear that our commission 
to prepare a code of laws may in some way encourage the 
idea that the Hawaiian Islands may in some remote future 
become a state or a part of a state, in our Government. 

I think they ought to be very careful in this respect, 
and I hope that in talking with them you will impress this 
view upon them. President Dole and Chief- Justice Judd 
are very astute men. I have a little fear that Senator 
Morgan may think that they have the right to territorial 
government which we have always said was a pledge of 
statehood. I think we may well follow the policy of 
England, adapting the government of her colonies or 
dependencies to the capacity of the people. England has 
every kind of a government for her colonies from what is 
called the "Crown" government to the liberal governments 
of Canada and AustraHa, which are practically republics 
with a nominal subjection to the mother country. 

Our duty and our only duty is to see that the best govern- 
ment for which the people have capacity is provided for 
Hawaii and any other dependencies which may become 
ours. In other words, the United States should see to it 
that they have good government and should stop there. If 
we for a moment tolerate the idea of present or future 
statehood, we shall have infinite trouble. 

Will you pardon this brief expression of my views? 
I think the question of what kind of a government shall be 
provided for Hawaii may be left to the future. It is not 
necessary to determine it fully now. The laws of Hawaii 
are to remain in force until Congress adopts new ones, and 
there need be no haste about planning and putting into 
operation a specific form of government there. We ought 
not to even use the word "territory" in connection with the 
Hawaiian Islands. 

A similar question arose five years later when the 

proposal was made to organize the Territory of Alaska. 

\ In the course of a letter which he wrote on June 1 1 , 1 903 , 



3IO Orville H. Piatt 

to Senator Dillingham of Vermont, Mr. Piatt declared 

his position again, without equivocation: 

I am very decidedly of the opinion that our policy should 
be, and should be declared to be, that we do not propose 
to admit states from outside of what may be called our 
home territory. I felt it when we adopted a form of 
government for the Sandwich Islands, Porto Rico, and the 
Philippines, but I thought the time was not ripe then to 
say just what I thought about it. My idea is that as to 
those outside possessions, we should retain over them the 
complete right of government as might appear to be for 
our own and their best interests, without any promise or 
intimation of future statehood. It makes no difference 
by what name such a government is to be called, whether 
colonial or independent or despotic. I do not believe we 
can afford to let in states from outside our older territory — 
in other words, I beheve that the United States should be 
bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north 
by the British possessions, on the west by the Pacific Ocean, 
and on the south by the Gulf and by Mexico ; that whatever 
territory comes in outside of that should be governed by us, 
and not by the people therein in the capacity of states 
admitted upon equal footing with the present States. 

I told Senator Beveridge that if he brought in a bill for 
the organization of the Territory of Alaska, and the ap- 
pointment of a delegate, I should have to oppose it, or at 
least propose an amendment, which should declare the 
policy of the United States to be against its future 
admission as a state. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

ON GUARD OVER CUBA 

New Problems — Chairman of Committee on Cuban Relations — 
Opposed to Annexation — The Question of Sovereignty — ■ 
Visit to Cuba, 1900 — The Cuban Scandal — Extra Allow- 
ances. 

WITH peace formally a fact, through the ratifica- 
tion of the Treaty of Paris, with American 
supremacy established permanently in Hawaii, Porto 
Rico, and the Philippines, with United States troops 
occupying the newly liberated island of Cuba, the 
American Congress was confronted by unaccustomed 
problems. It was fortunate that the men who then 
controlled the affairs of state were such as they were. 
In every crisis of American history it had happened 
hitherto that leaders fit to cope with it had been ready 
at hand, and the pregnant time following the war with 
Spain found its own leaders in the men already shaping 
the deliberations of Cabinet and Congress. McKinley 
was in the White House, broadened and strengthened 
by the stress of war; Hay was at the State Department, 
a consummate diplomat, fitted by aptitude and training 
skilfully to influence the councils of the Powers; Root 
was Secretary of War, a great lawyer, a great adminis- 
trator, equipped with a talent for lucid, cogent state- 
ment invaluable in the enunciation of new policies. 
Taft was in the Philippines, Wood in Cuba, Allen in 
Porto Rico. The administration of the United States 

311 



312 Orville H. Piatt 

and its dependencies could not have been in safer 
hands. 

In the Senate was a group of men worthy of the best 
days of the Repubhc: Hale and Frye of Maine, Chandler 
and Gallinger of New Hampshire, Proctor and Ross 
of Vermont, Aldrich of Rhode Island, Piatt and 
Hawley of Connecticut, Hoar and Lodge of Massa- 
chusetts, Hanna and Foraker of Ohio, Beveridge and 
Fairbanks of Indiana, Cullom of Illinois, Spooner of 
Wisconsin, Davis and Nelson of Minnesota, Burrows and 
McMillan of Michigan, Allison and Gear of Iowa, Carter 
of Montana, Warren and Clark of Wyoming, Teller and 
Wolcott of Colorado, Morgan and Pettus of Alabama, 
Cockrell and Vest of Missouri. There were marked 
differences of opinion among these men, but a unity of 
purpose, in that thought of personal or party advantage 
played a minor part in their deliberations on the state 
of the Union. When the Fifty-sixth Congress came 
together, on December 4, 1899, vSpecial care was taken 
in the constitution of the new committees of the Senate 
entrusted with the consideration of legislation relating 
to our new possessions and dependencies. 

Mr. Lodge was made Chairman of the Committee on 
the Philippines, Mr. Foraker on Pacific Islands and 
Porto Rico, Mr. Piatt on Relations with Cuba. With 
these chairmen were grouped the ablest men in the 
Senate. Senator Piatt's committee was peculiarly 
notable in its personnel. Associated with him in the 
work which it was recognized would be probably the 
most delicate and important of Congress were Aldrich, 
Cullom, Davis, McMillan, Chandler, Spooner, Teller, 
Money, Butler, and Taliaferro, the last four being 
representatives of the Democratic and Populist 
minority. It was as Chairman of this Committee, 



On Guard over Cuba 313 

thus scrupulously chosen, that he was to perform the 
work which if not the most important of his career was 
at least the most notable — the work which in the 
closing years of a useful life won him the national 
popular recognition which his unassuming worth had 
not hitherto demanded. 

It was not his own wish to be Chairman of the Cuban 
Committee. If he could have chosen for himself he 
would have been placed at the head of the Committee 
on the Philippines. That was an assignment upon 
which he would have entered in a spirit of religious 
exaltation; for he was deeply rooted in the faith that 
in the acquisition of the Philippines his country had 
crossed the threshold of a new and greater future. In 
the original distribution of the chairmanships, he 
understood that the Philippines would be assigned to 
him, and it was perhaps the keenest disappointment 
of his political life when the Senate leaders determined 
that he could render better service as Chairman of the 
Cuban Committee. The assignment was distasteful 
to him. Prior to the war with Spain he was not one 
of those who cried unceasingly that the Cuban people 
should be sustained in their struggle for liberty. He 
acquiesced in our intervention not from any love of 
Cuba but solely as a duty which his own people owed to 
themselves and to mankind; and now he was called 
to the thankless task of administering the trust which 
that intervention had imposed upon us. He entered 
on the work with the modesty and conscientiousness 
which never failed him. There were serious problems 
with regard to Cuba at the best, and they were shortly 
to be complicated by the revelations of dishonesty 
among our public officials there which came to light a 
few months after the organization of the new committee 



314 Orville H. Piatt 

— revelations involving an insignificant number of 
American office-holders in the island, but far-reaching 
in their moral effect. 

Most important of the questions concerning Cuba 
was that of the length of American occupation. Hav- 
ing taken the government of the island in trust, how 
long should we continue to hold it, and what if ever 
should be the manner of evacuation. Probably a 
great majority of the American people, as well as of 
American public men believed that once in Cuba we 
were bound to stay; that our "temporary" occupation 
was actually for all time, that the flag having been run 
up would never be hauled down. Senator Piatt was not 
with the majority in this. He dreaded annexation — 
the bringing of Cuba into such relations with the United 
States that ultimately she would be pleading for 
admission to the sisterhood of States. For the stability 
of the Cuban people he had a profound distrust. But 
he looked upon them as wards for a period to be guided 
and guarded until they should show themselves capable 
of self-control. At the same time he regarded as 
"foolish" the Teller amendment to the resolution of 
intervention disclaiming " any disposition or intention 
toexercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control " over the 
island except for its pacification. That resolution he 
regretted as hampering the otherwise free action of the 
United States.^ He assumed the chairmanship in the 

1 The United States Government must have a policy with regard 
to Cuba, and that policy must be one which is the best possible 
under conditions as they exist. I think annexation is absolutely 
out of the question. In the first place the Teller resolution stands 
not only in the way of that, but all other actions which we might 
take if it had never been passed. I think I know enough of con- 
gressional sentiment to know that it is regarded as a pledge of the 
Government against annexation. That being out of the question 



On Guard over Cuba 315 

hope that sooner or later it might fall to his lot to help 
shape the terms of restoration, but pending such a time 
he realized that his committee faced a problem 
toward the solution of which the past experience of 
the United States furnished no assistance. It was to be 
determined how a temporary sovereignty should be 
exercised over territory which was in our keeping but 
the inhabitants of which were not of our fibre. We 
could not exercise full sovereignty, yet we had made 
ourselves responsible for the establishment and con- 
tinuance of good government. 

He became Chairman of the Committee on Cuban 
Relations on December 14, 1899, at the beginning of the 
first session of the Fifty-sixth Congress. We were then 
exercising military control over Cuba. Leonard Wood, 
a major-general of volunteers, appointed on December 
5, 1899, had succeeded Major-General John R. 
Brooke as military governor on December 13th, Gen- 
eral Brooke having been in command at Havana for one 
year. The military authorities were in complete con- 
trol on the island excepting only that the post-office 
was under the direction of officials selected by the 
post-ofhce department and subject to its jurisdiction. 

It was providential that at the head of the committee 
having Cuban affairs in charge there was a trained 
lawyer, of long legislative experience, cautious and 
conscientious. It may be doubted whether any other 
could have been selected who would have begun at once 
so thorough and intelligent an inquiry into the com- 
pHcated questions involved. Mr. Piatt not only studied 

what next? We cannot forever remain in military occupation. 
We have promised them an independent government, and when 
that is estabUshed it seems to me we must withdraw. — Letter to 
E. F. Atkins, June ii, 1901. 



3i6 Orville H. Piatt 

closely all published authorities but supplemented his 
study by consultation with those who were most 
familiar with the conditions under which Cuba had come 
into our control. He appealed especially to the mem- 
bers of the American Commission which negotiated 
the treaty of peace at Paris. Significant of the kind 
of inquiry upon which he felt impelled to enter is a 
letter which he wrote on December 23, 1899, a few 
days after assuming the chairmanship of the committee, 
to Judge George Gray of Delaware, who as a Senator 
had been a member of the Peace Commission : 

Forgive me if I ask you for your private opinion as to 
some questions that are troubling me at the outset on my 
assuming the duties as Chairman of the Senate Committee 
on our relations with Cuba. 

First, — ^where does that thing, or contention, or right 
which is called "sovereignty" now rest as regards Cuba? 
Can the right in the very nature of things be in abeyance; 
can it exist in an unorganized people? If you had not 
rejected at Paris the contention of the Spanish commis- 
sioners that when Spain relinquished, we of necessity 
took the sovereignty of Cuba, I should be inclined to 
think as a pure legal proposition, that we did take and had 
a righu to exercise some kind of sovereignty over the 
island and its people, a sovereignty certainly coupled with 
a self-imposed trust, and in the nature of things, temporary. 
But you reject that idea, though, as I read the memoran- 
dum attached to the protocols, you did not go very fully 
or exhaustively into the question as to where the sover- 
eignty over Cuba did go when Spain relinquished it, but 
if we did not accept it from Spain, did we get a qualified 
or limited right of sovereignty by virtue of our miHtary 
occupation? It is not from the desire to enter into an 
academic discussion of the question that I am seeking a 
solution. 



On Guard over Cuba 317 

We are to be immediately pressed for all sorts of legisla- 
tion with reference to Cuba. If we have any kind of 
sovereignty there it would furnish a basis for legislation, 
but admitting that w^e have none, what basis is there for 
legislation with reference to the island ? If our right there 
is only that of mihtary occupancy for the pacification of the 
island, under the fourth section of the resolution which we 
passed, how can we legislate at all? Can we as a Congress 
prescribe the form, character, and Hmitations of the govern- 
ment to be established by the people of Cuba ? Can we even 
by legislation declare who may participate in the estabhsh- 
ment of such government ; can we now create a debt which 
shall be binding on the island when the new government 
shall have been estabhshed, or grant franchises which shall 
run and be vahd after that ; or even establish customs regu- 
lations, or prescribe taxes, or do any legislative act which 
would be in our power if we have sovereignty there? 

You will observe that the fourth section of the resolution 
to which I have referred disclaims any intention to exercise 
sovereignty except for the pacification of the island, an 
implication that so far as may be necessary to its pacifica- 
tion, we may exercise sovereignty, but how wide a meaning 
is to be given to that word "pacification"? Military 
occupation is purely an executive act, arising from con- 
quest or treaty. The powers of government under military 
occupancy are broad, comprehensive, and scarcely subject 
to limitation. How far can Congress, the legislative branch, 
interfere with the executive branch of our Government in 
the matter of military occupancy and administration there- 
under? 

I notice that the attorney-general in the opinion that he 
gave in the matter of allowing the Commercial Cable 
Company the right to land its cable on the island of Cuba 
makes use of this language: 

' ' While not meaning to concede that Congress by legisla- 
tive act has power to restrain or control the proper exercise 
of the powers of the commander-in-chief of the army and 



3i8 Orville H. Piatt 

navy of the United States, occupying under the law of 
belligerent right, foreign territory — a question that may well 
be open to doubt — yet, etc." 

It seems to me that the question of whether Congress 
may direct the Executive as to the acts which he shall 
perform, or order, in case of military occupation, may well 
be doubted. 

Cuba is not a part of the United States, it does not even 
belong to us. For every conceivable purpose it is foreign 
territory, is it not? And can Congress direct the Executive 
in his administration of affairs of a foreign territory thus 
under a military occupancy, when that occupancy is by 
virtue of the military powers entrusted by the Constitu- 
tion to him as commander-in-chief? 

We did, in an Appropriation bill as you will remember, 
direct that no "property, franchises, or concessions of any 
kind whatever, shall be granted by the United States, or 
any military or other authority whatever, in the island of 
Cuba during the occupation thereof by the United States. "^ 
Now the very parties that wanted that legislation passed 
want us to repeal it as to granting franchises. I did not 
beheve in it when it was done, but the question whether 
we could pass such legislation did not occur to me then. 

Admitting that we have the power to direct the President 
in the exercise of his military authority in Cuba, must there 
not be some limitations on our right to do that ? 

I know that each one of the queries which I have pro- 
pounded presents a case for the final determination of the 
Supreme Court of the United States. I do not expect that 
you will attempt to give me anything hke an opinion which 
you would want to be bound by, but in working this thing 
out in my own mind, I would be mighty glad to avail myself 
of any suggestions that you might be willing to make to me, 
promising that I will treat all you say as in strict confidence, 
not even communicating it to the committee, or members 
of the committee, unless you would be wilHng to have me. 

' The Foraker Amendment. 



On Guard over Cuba 319 

I know you must have thought of these questions while 
in Paris, and since then, and it is no mere idle talk when 
I say that I should give a great deal of weight to your 
conclusions, or even your impressions. 

Members of the commission did not hesitate to say 
that by declining to have the sovereignty of Cuba 
relinquished to us they never thought that we escaped 
the responsibility of sovereignty. As one of them 
explained : 

Spain was dealing with us. We were a party to the 
negotiations in which she relinquished her sovereignty, 
and we had then and have since retained military control 
to which sovereignty certainly attached. 

But the working out of technical legal questions was 
only a small part of the task which the Cuban Com- 
mittee had undertaken. There was the even more 
pressing and immediate practical question of the 
administration of the island in preparation for its ulti- 
mate independence. At the threshold those entrusted 
with its control were handicapped by the Foraker 
Amendment which, while it had the wholesome effect of 
relieving the administration of our dependencies from 
suspicion of mercenary intent, prevented the exploita- 
tion of Cuba by American capital at the very moment 
when her industries were ripe for encouragement. 
The commercial development of the island, the im- 
provement of sociological and political conditions were 
all matters for which the newly organized committee 
felt itself in a measure responsible, and which could be 
dealt with far more intelligently after a personal study 
of local conditions. No sooner was the most pressing 
work of the session completed than Senator Piatt 
obtained permission from the Senate for a subcom- 



320 Orville H. Piatt 

mittee to visit the island and inquire into conditions 
existine: there. The Chairman with Senators Aldrich 
and Teller constituted the subcommittee which left 
Washington on March 14, 1900, and returned on March 
31st, after spending ten days in Cuba, visiting Havana, 
Cienfuegos and Matanzas, interviewing politicians with 
regard to the character of government to be set up, 
conferring with representatives of banking and in- 
dustrial interests, examining sugar plantations, and 
discussing the general situation with the military 
authorities. There probably never was a congressional 
excursion which was more completely given over to the 
business immediately in hand, and the Committee were 
able to congratulate themselves later, that in obedience 
to the scruples of the Chairman they had conscientiously 
paid their own way, declining offers of hospitality 
which, under conditions soon to develop, might have 
proved embarrassing. 

It was fortunate that the visit of the Committee was 
made at this time, for hardly had they returned to 
Washington when out of a clear sky shot the bolt of 
scandal. Neeley and Reeves, two officials of the Cuban 
post-office, were found false to their trust. Their 
defalcation was discovered in April, 1900, through 
investigations set on foot by General Wood, who had 
been led to suspect irregularities in that part of the 
Government which was under the immediate control of 
the director-general of posts. It was the spring of a 
Presidential year and President McKinley was about 
to come up for re-election. The Democratic minority 
in the Senate could not be expected to let so promising 
an opportunity slip for making political capital. 

Senator Bacon of Georgia, on May nth, introduced a 
resolution directing the Committee on Relations with 



On Guard over Cuba 321 

Cuba to investigate and report to the Senate "as early 
as practicable" regarding the moneys received and 
expended in the island of Cuba by, through, and under 
the officials and representatives of the United States, 
both civil and military, from the date of the occupation 
of Cuba by the military forces of the United States 
until and including the 30th day of April, 1900.^ 

» The original Bacon resolution contained the following comprehen- 
sive provisions: "Resolved, That the Committee on Relations with 
Cuba is hereby directed to investigate and report to the Senate as 
early as practicable regarding the moneys received and expended 
in the island of Cuba, by, through, and under the officials and repre- 
sentatives of the United States, both civil and military, from the 
date of the occupation of Cuba by the military forces of the United 
States until and including the 30th day of April, 1900. 

"Said committee shall investigate and report as to the receipts 
as follows: From customs; from postal service; from internal reve- 
nue; from all other sources, specifying the details as far as prac- 
ticable, and particularly the places where, and dates within which 
said amounts were collected or received, and the officer or officers 
collecting and receiving the same, as well as the law or authority 
under which said amounts were in each instance so collected or 
received. 

"Said committee shall investigate and report as to the expendi- 
tures of the said amounts so received, the necessity and propriety 
thereof, specifying in classes and in detail, so far as practicable, 
said expenditures, and particularly the work, services, or prop- 
erty for which said expenditures were made and the value 
thereof, also the law or authority under which each of said ex- 
penditures was made, the officer, civil or military, by whom said 
expenditure was authorized, and the officer, civil or military, by 
whom said expenditure was made, and the particular fund from 
which the money was taken for said expenditure. 

"Said committee shall also report a statement of all public works 
of every kind, including buildings, wharves, railroads, and all 
other structures built or constructed, improved, repaired, or decor- 
ated by or under the authority of any such officer, civil, or military, 
and in each instance the cost, value, necessity, and propriety of 
the same, and the uses to which said buildings or structures have 
been put. Where said buildings and works were constructed or 
improvements were made by contract, or where the material used 



322 Orville H. Piatt 

At the same time, a great outcry arose over the extra 
allowances made to the military governor of Cuba and 
to others performing civil functions in the island of 
Cuba. The military governor received in addition to 
his salary as a United States officer, an allowance of 
$7500 a year out of the Cuban revenues. The military 
governor of Havana received $5000, the collector of 
customs, $1800, and the treasurer of the island, $1800. 
It was not contended that these allowances were ex- 
cessive, only that they were illegal — which they were 
not. But whether illegal or not, the raising of a ques- 
tion concerning them necessitated a painstaking defence 
of the administration, while the introduction of Bacon's 
resolution on the threshold of a Presidential campaign 
likewise necessitated an investigation by the Senate. 
Mr. Piatt recognized all this, although he regarded the 
grant of extra allowances as obviously proper, and 
although a Senate investigation was superfluous, as a 
method of arriving at the truth, in view of the fact that 
the original discovery of wrong-doing had been made 
by General Wood himself and that all those involved in 
peculation had been summarily dismissed and held for 
trial. The Senator was tired out with the work of the 
session and longed for rest, but he saw himself doomed 

in the same was furnished by contract, the committee shall report 
copies of each of said contracts and the names of all parties 
interested in each of the same. 

Said committee shall also report a statement of the personal 
property which was purchased or procured and intrusted to any 
oflficer, civil or military, in Cuba within said time, the cost and 
value of the same, and the uses to which said property has been 
put and the disposition which has been made thereof." 

To this Mr. Piatt offered an amendment empowering the com- 
mittee to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, to hold 
their sessions during the session or recess of Congress at any place 
they might determine, and to employ expert accountants. 



On Guard over Cuba 323 

immediately to the delicate and difficult task of manag- 
ing in the Senate a defence of the administration and 
then to a wearisome and fruitless inquiry into a subject 
the possibilities of which had already been exhausted. 
It was indeed a test of his devotion to public duty. 



CHAPTER XXV 

CUBAN SCANDALS AND ALLOWANCES 

Investigation Authorized — Speech of May 23, 1900 — Longing for 
Home — Correspondence with General Wood. 

THE closing weeks of a long session of Congress are 
always dreary. Senators and Representatives 
exhausted with the winter's vigil are eager to be away. 
The summer's heat of Washington is enervating and 
depressing. For Senator Piatt this summer of the 
Cuban scandals was especially trying. It was his lot 
to be the watcher on the tower, jealously noting every 
changing phase of legislation. Mrs. Piatt was at 
Kirby Comer, making the new home ready for the 
summer, and he was left alone in the plainly furnished 
rooms which served him for winter quarters at the 
Arlington Hotel. He longed to be through with it. 
As the spring foliage began to take on life, his thoughts 
turned toward the Litchfield hills. One Sunday he 
was able to spend in Judea. Once or twice he seized 
the opportunity to run out a few miles to Washington 
Grove, where a relative had a rough little summer 
cottage, and where he had a quiet time sitting on the 
porch most of the day meditating, with nobody near 
but his faithful colored servant, James Hurley. But all 
the while the birds of the Litchfield woods were singing 
in his ear. Every day he penned a message to Mrs. 

324 



Cuban Scandals and Allowances 325 

Piatt, most of which breathed a longing to be home. 
On May day he writes: 

The leaves must be coming out, the blossoms beginning 
to show, the grass green, the hotbed developing lettuce and 
radishes, the robins building in the apple trees, and the 
Phoebe birds under the porch. 

Again he writes: 

It is a pretty picture you draw in little touches here and 
there — the magnolia in bloom, the velvet grass, the gray 
barnyard fence — it makes me think of Jerusalem, my happy 
home. 

As the days dragged their slow length along, the 
yearning became more intense: 

I think I know what you are doing, just starting up the 
lane for church. I wish I were going with you. I have 
a picture in my mind I can see it all, even to each vine 
that runs on the wall, and the flowers that grow on the 
Rossiter rocks by the roadside. ... I wish we could skip 
these last days — so many things will go through which 
ought not to, and so many things will fail which ought to 
pass. I must keep my temper and my good nature and not 
allow myself to be disagreeable because I can't have my 
own way. . . . How little we can foresee what we can do. 
I had been looking forward to a rest this summer, and now 
this Cuban business comes in to disturb my mind and take 
up my time — how much of it, I don't know. Then comes 
the Presidential election. So I don't see much rest ahead — 
mental rest at all events. 

Again he cries: 

I want to go fishing. But each day here has its special 
duties, and it is really hard to get away without letting 
something pass which ought not to pass. To-morrow it 
is the Boer resolution. What it will be Monday I don't 
know; but it will be something. You needn't be afraid 



o 



26 Orville H. Piatt 



that I will break down. I think that I live and thrive on 
work. 

All this time with his thoughts turned homeward 
Senator Piatt was faithful to the drudgery of his trust. 
He knew that the administration must depend upon 
him and perhaps one other for its defence against Demo- 
cratic attacks. The brief letters jotted down in those 
days — sometimes in his room at the hotel, sometimes 
at his desk in the Senate chamber, give an intimate 
insight into the developments week by week. A few 
excerpts will serve to show how the responsibilities 
weighed on his mind: 

April 26, 1900: 

I am full of the President's defence on the Cuban al- 
lowances now. - It is right that I should do it, and when 
I look the Senate over there seems to be no one to do it, 
or I might say that can do it, except Spooner and myself. 
Perhaps there may be no occasion for it, but on such things 
one has to be always ready for what may come. 

May 17: 

This Cuban stealing business is making me lots of trouble. 
We have got to let the Bacon resolution pass. And then 
we must investigate — that is, I must. Who will help me 
I don't know. It is an onerous task. The Cuban scandal 
is really bad and mortifying. The Democrats and Populists 
are making all they can of it and the worst is they have too 
much ground to go on. 

May 18: 

Last evening I went over to the War Department and 
spent the time until midnight talking over Cuban affairs. 

May 19: 

What disturbs me more than anything else is the dis- 
closures which come out about Cuban affairs. They seem 




o 
o 



z 
o 



z 



< 

UJ 

z 

o 
o 

> 

CO 

a: 



Cuban Scandals and Allowances 327 

worse and worse. I don't know that we shall ever get to 
the bottom of them. 

May 20: 

Have been worrying about Cuban affairs. You don't 
know how embarrassed I am. The New York World and 
New York Journal are full of it to-day, with scare headlines, 
portraits, reasons, suspicions, etc. I confess I do not know 
how to treat the matter. It is not easy. Spooner and I 
have got to make the best of it. Well, no matter! I shall 
live it through, and I shall take care of the administration. 

May 22, 11.00 P.M. 

I have thought and thought and worried as to what I 
should say about this Cuban matter. The things which 
come to light each day make what I had thought of saying 
unwise. So I have to change my tactics every morning; 
and when I shall say something I presume the lively capers 
of the next day will make it entirely out of place and in- 
admissible. But I must do it to-morrow. Can't wait any 
longer. I am making no notes. As usual I must trust to 
luck. Hope I shall sleep well to-night and be fresh in the 
morning. 

May 23, 11.00 P.M.: 

I 've done it. Good, bad, or indifferent, my speech is 
off my hands, if not off my mind. I 'm not satisfied with 
it; others pretend they are. It was a hard speech to make, 
but I did as well as I could. It tired me though. Spooner 
and I had the day to ourselves. He was magnificent. I 
wish I could speak as well as he. 

May 24: 

Spooner made a magnificent speech. He easily eclipses 
me, but I am not envious. I help him and rejoice in it. 
He is going home just as soon as he gets his speech in the 
record, and will not come back. Then I shall have it all 



328 Orville H. Piatt 

alone, and no one to help carry my burden. It 's foolish 
to think I have a burden, but I can't help it. I did look 
forward to rest and comfort at home after adjournment ; but 
I don't know what this Cuban investigation will bring 
forth. 

The speech of May 23d, in spite of his misgivings 
was one of the most effective he ever made in the 
Senate. He did not deny or condone the offence of the 
recreant American officials who had brought the Cuban 
scandal upon the administration: 

The Senator from Georgia has no monopoly of the 
humiliation, indignation, and shame which should be 
and are felt by every honest and patriotic man in the 
United States. The disclosures in Cuba are shocking. 
They strike a blow, and a direct blow at every citizen of 
the United States. If the defalcation of Mr. Neeley had 
occurred in Boston or New York or Washington, it would 
have been a sad and shameful affair, but it would not have 
been so sad and shameful as when it occurs in a country 
under our guardianship, for the administration of whose 
affairs with honesty and economy we are responsible, not 
only to the people of Cuba but to ourselves and the world 
as well. Nothing that has occurred in the history of 
defalcations has made such an impression upon the public 
mind as this, and justly so; and more than in any other 
case is it incumbent upon the Government to probe this 
to the very bottom, unsparingly, unceasingly, without 
hesitation, without reference to who may be complicated 
or concerned. 

But he was indignant that what had really occurred, 
shameful as it was, should be amplified and exaggerated 
and seized upon for the purpose of a political campaign 
to convince the people that our administration in Cuba 



Cuban Scandals and Allowances 329 

was disgracefully lax and dishonest throughout. He 
dwelt upon the fact that General Wood had discovered 
the irregularities and taken steps to punish them; he 
went in great detail into the administration of the island ; 
he compared the expenditures in Cuba with the ex- 
penditures in states and municipalities of the United 
States; he declared that the extra allowances were 
necessary unless we proposed to treat our officers in 
Cuba charged with the administration of civil affairs 
"with a parsimony and meanness which would bring 
the blush of shame to the cheek of every American 
citizen." 

Senator Bacon had asked what the United States was 
doing in Cuba; what our authority was for being there, 
and why we did not come away. To this Mr. Piatt 
replied : 

We are there because the American people, acting through 
Congress, directed the President of the United States, as 
commander-in-chief of the armies and navies of the United 
States, to go to Cuba and destroy the power of Spain there. 
That is why we are there. 

I agree that the situation in Cuba is unique, that history 
does not furnish a parallel, that no precisely similar case 
has been treated by writers upon international law, that 
our relations there must be determined upon general 
principles and the necessity of the situation. 

Mr. President, I was not in favor of the war with Spain. 
I believed that it might have been avoided with honor and 
with the security of freedom to the island of Cuba. But the 
American people said "no"; and when, by accident or 
design, the good ship Maine, with its American sailors on 
board, was blown into the air, and its sailors found a grave 
in the harbor of Havana, there was no power on earth that 
could prevent the war. When that war was declared, I 
accepted the consequences. I thought I saw then more 



330 Orville H. Piatt 

clearly than a good many of the people who were urging us 
on in hot haste to engage in war. 

I thought I saw that if we turned Spain out of Cuba we 
would become responsible not only to Spain and the 
Cuban people but to ourselves and to the whole world for 
the proper administration of the affairs of Cuba and the 
erection of a proper Republican Government there. We 
have a duty to perform in Cuba yet, as we had a supposed 
duty to perform when we went there to free the people of 
Cuba. That duty is not yet discharged. The American 
people will see to it that that duty is fully and completely 
discharged, as much as they saw that its performance was 
begun. 

What is that duty? It is that our only right to be in 
Cuba is because in the resolution of intervention the fourth 
paragraph said this: 

" Fourth: That the United States hereby disclaims any 
disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, 
or control over said island except for the pacification there- 
of, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, 
to leave the government and control of the island to its 
people." 

It is said that is our only warrant for being there; that 
we are self-constituted agents for the purpose of the 
pacification of the island, with a duty to leave the moment 
that pacification is accomplished. Well, there is a little 
more than that, Mr. President. . . . There was war with 
Spain, and a portion of Spain was conquered. Then 
we had a preliminary treaty of peace, and by that treaty 
of peace we came, as the conquerors, into possession of the 
island of Cuba, and by that treaty of peace we agreed to 
do something, too. Article I of that treaty says: 

" Article I. Spain relinquishes all claim of sovereignty 
over and title to Cuba. 

"And as the island is, upon its evacuation by Spain, 
to be occupied by the United States, the United States 
will, so long as such occupation shall last, assume and dis- 



Cuban Scandals and Allowances 331 

charge the obhgations that may under international law 
result from the fact of its occupation, for the protection of 
life and property." 

That was our agreement with Spain. Why did we make 
it? Because the ambassador of France, in negotiating the 
protocol, insisted upon it; that is why that was inserted 
in the treaty of peace with Spain. .... 

Up to the time of the evacuation by Spain our occu- 
pancy was a military occupancy, and was so recognized by 
the treaty. When the evacuation was made and the pro- 
perty turned over to us, it was turned over to the military 
authorities. . . . That occupation will cease to be a military 
occupation when, under that military occupation, an 
opportunity shall have been given to the people of Cuba 
to set up for themselves a government to which we may 
turn over the island and to which we may leave the govern- 
ment and control of the island. 

What does "pacification" mean in that clause? Does it 
mean merely the establishment of nominal and formal peace? 
Does it mean so soon as hostilities ceased our troops were 
to be withdrawn and the island left to all the contentions 
and factions which existed there? No, Mr. President; we 
became responsible for something else than mere nominal 
peace in the island of Cuba. We became responsible for 
the establishment of a government there, which we would 
be willing to indorse to the people of the world — a stable 
government, a government for which we would be willing 
to be responsible in the eyes of the world. Until that time 
occurs, no patriotic American will ask that our troops and 
our government be withdrawn from the island of Cuba, 

His concluding words were impressive : 

Mr. President, I have spoken longer than I intended on 
this subject. I repeat what I said at first, that the charges 
by way of insinuation, innuendo, rumor, scandal, and mud 
throwing, have made it necessary that this investigation 
should go on; and whatever of personal discomfort may 



332 Orville H. Piatt 

be encountered, I am willing to accept it, and, so far as I 
am concerned, to promise that nothing shall be covered 
up; that everything shall be brought to the light of day; 
that the keen sunlight of publicity shall be turned upon the 
administration in Cuba ; and, Mr. President, I entertain a 
confidence, which is not to be shaken until the facts shall 
shake it, that when that investigation has been concluded 
it will definitely appear that we have been regaled with 
grossest exaggerations and with the most uncalled for sus- 
picions; and that we shall find that our army officers now, 
as ever, can be trusted, and are honest and upright, and 
that our civil officers may also be trusted as upright men, 
although it unfortunately appears that some of them have 
now gone so wickedly and lamentably astray. 

The resolutions were adopted and he prepared to de- 
vote himself for weary months to a distasteful task, 
involving exhaustive hearings and painstaking reports. 
It was over a year before the Committee completed its 
work, after calling on the departments involved for 
detailed reports covering almOvSt every conceivable 
transaction: and it was not until March 15, 1901, that 
the Secretary of War sent to the Committee the last 
information called for by the resolution of investiga- 
tion, so that the final report could be made. 

In the meantime Mr. Piatt at the request of General 
Wood had taken up other questions relating to the 
government of the island. General Wood was especially 
urgent that there should no longer be a division of con- 
trol in Cuba and that the entire administration should 
be in the hands of the military authorities. Writing 
to him on May 31, 1900, Mr. Piatt said: 

I thoroughly agree with you in your suggestion that you 
ought to have undivided control in Cuba and I had seen 
the President about your office before I received your letter 



Cuban Scandals and Allowances 333 

and since. I think he intends to put the postal matters 
under your control, but he wants to do it in a way and at a 
time when it will not appear to the country as it if were a 
reflection on the postmaster-general. I do not know just 
what he will do or how he will do it. I fear he will try to 
make a sort of double headed arrangement which will still 
be under the Post-Office Department. I am going to keep 
the matter before him, however. I suppose you get the 
Congressional Record and have kept track of the talk we 
have had in Congress and especially in the Senate which has 
resulted in ordering an investigation by our Committee. 
The stealings have been very unfortunate and have only 
been relieved from working a great deal of dissension politi- 
cally by the fact that they were discovered and exposed by 
you, and the public having confidence that you will follow 
them up and will not tolerate any crookedness anywhere. 
The whole Congress is nervous and liable to take the bits 
in its teeth and say we ought to get out of Cuba, and it 
requires a steady hand to keep things straight now in the 
last days of this session. We hope to adjourn on the 
6th of June, and if we can accomplish it matters will be 
comparatively safe. I think we shall now, and that the 
pressure of other things is going to prevent any action 
whatever with reference to Cuban affairs beyond the in- 
vestigation which has been ordered and which will have 
to go on during the recess. 

I had fully intended at the close of the session to propose 
a modification of the Foraker amendment, but, to tell the 
truth, I do not dare to do it now. The Democrats are 
seeking every possible opportunity to charge, and, where 
they cannot charge they insinuate, that everything is wrong 
in Cuba, that while frauds have appeared only in the postal 
system the miHtary government has been characterized by 
extravagant expenditure. As to the latter, they have 
made very little impression, however, but, if we proposed 
now to modify the Foraker amendment, it would be seized 
upon by them as an evidence that political friends are going 



334 Orville H. Piatt 

to have an opportunity to exploit schemes and plans for 
their profit and advantage, and bring up again this whole 
Cuban discussion and more of it, and would point to it as an 
evidence that we did not intend to leave the island and were 
only planning to continue occupancy indefinitely. I have 
talked to Senator Foraker about it and, while he believes 
the amendment ought to be modified, he agrees with me 
that it is a mighty bad time to bring it up. Of course, 
you can go along the same way until the next session of 
Congress when the Presidential election will be past and 
all this unquiet and nervous condition will have gone by, 
and we can discuss the merits of the situation without any 
reference to the political advantage ; in other words, when 
reason will have resumed its sway. 

I realize your embarrassment and the tremendous 
responsibility placed upon you and the difficult problem 
you have to work out, and my idea is that the thing to do 
at this time is to keep quiet. They have not shaken con- 
fidence in you to any extent and I do not believe they 
will. Just how fast or far we shall progress with this 
investigation, or whether we shall have to visit Cuba 
and make inquiries there, I am unable to say. We want to 
pursue the investigation honestly and thoroughly, believing 
that everything that is now disclosed will justify your con- 
duct there and give evidence to the people that you are 
faithfully and wisely bringing about the independence 
which we have promised to Cuba. If we had made no pro- 
mise there would be I think a strong annexation sentiment 
among the business people of the United States and of 
behef that our promise of pacification included the establish- 
ment of a government which should be a republic in fact 
as well as in name, and with which we should have such rela- 
tions as would safeguard and protect not only the interests 
of Cuba, but our own interests with relation thereto. 

The accumulation of unwelcome tasks meant months 
of dismal drudgery to Senator Piatt. Just how great 



Cuban Scandals and Allowances 335 

a sacrifice it all was to him may be gleaned from his 
correspondence. Congress adjourned the last week in 
June, and he hurried home to Judea for such rest as he 
could get. Writing from there to John H. Flagg he 
says: 

My summer seems already broken up. I have to enjoy 
this place thinking about it when I am far away from 
it. If there is anything that will bring you health, enjoy- 
ment, and happiness it is this Litchfield County life. I have 
read first and last a good many entertaining disquisitions 
on where the Garden of Eden was located, but it seems 
strange that in all the places that have been claimed for 
it between the North and South Poles, no one has ever said 
Litchfield County, but I am sure that this was the original 
paradise. Norfolk is rather on the outer edge of it. Wash- 
ington, and especially the Judea end of Washington, was 
right in the centre of the garden. I do not think that the 
tree of knowledge of good and evil where Eve cut up such a 
prank at the instance of Old Nick was just hereabouts. I 
think she must have wandered out of the garden a little 
to find the tree ; for every tree here is pleasant to the sight 
and good for food. 

But that summer was to be a busy one, with little 
in it of the peace of Judea. Not only was he burdened 
with the work of analyzing Cuban finances but he was 
called upon as usual to bear his part in the Presidential 
campaign which resulted in the election of McKinley 
and Roosevelt. When he returned to Washington at 
the beginning of the short session in December he was 
weary rather than rested by this summer's absence; but 
the session upon which he was about to enter proved to 
be one of the most exhausting, as it was perhaps the 
most momentous of his entire career. 



CHAPTER XXVI 



THE PLATT AMENDMENT 



Establishing a New Republic — Conferences of Cuban Committee — 
The Question of Authorship. 

IN the fall of 1900, the emancipated Cuban people had 
their first opportunity to show their capacity for 
self-government. Having been subject for two years 
to the military control of the United States they were 
at last in the judgment of General Wood and the ad- 
ministration at Washington so well settled under new 
conditions that they might properly be entrusted with 
the setting up of governmental machinery of their 
own. The course of the United States in the island 
had been an example for mankind. We had freed its 
inhabitants from oppression and furnished its starving 
people with food; we had remodelled its cities and 
introduced systems of sanitation, where filth had 
prevailed for centuries ; we had stamped out the plague 
of yellow fever; we had established a school system and 
set the feet of the people in the way of orderly advance- 
ment; we had restored them to their peaceful occupa- 
tions and protected them in their industrial rights. In 
the words of Senator Piatt we had brought order out 
of chaos, tranquillity out of horror, happiness out of 
misery; we had stamped out pestilence, substituted 
education for ignorance, and grafted as rapidly as pos- 
sible the spirit of American institutions upon a corrupt 

336 



The Piatt Amendment 337 

civilization. We had done for Cuba what no nation on 
earth ever did for a conquered province. 

Yet all this was in preparation not for the territorial 
aggrandizement of the United States but for the 
creation of a new nationality, the establishment of an 
independent repubHc. All the preliminaries to such 
a result were consequently carried into effect. 

A census of the population was taken; municipal 
elections were held and municipal governments estab- 
lished; the conditions of suffrage were prescribed, and 
finally on July 25, 1900, President McKinley ordered an 
election of delegates to frame a constitution. Carrying 
out the implied obligations assumed in the treaty of 
peace, it was provided in the order initiating the con- 
stitutional convention that the delegates in framing a 
constitution should " as a part thereof provide for and 
agree with the Government of the United States upon 
the relations to exist between that Government and 
the government of Cuba." 

The convention thus chosen assembled at Havana on 
the first Monday of November, 1900. It was controlled 
by the most radical element of the Cuban electorate. 
Its leaders represented the revolutionary and reac- 
tionary faction, irresponsible as children, jealous of 
outside influences, dazzled with the prospect of at last 
being their own masters. For three months they were 
in session, doing their work without interference or 
suggestion from Washington, but not without close 
observation by the leaders there. 

In due time it appeared that the general features 
of the new constitution had been agreed upon. There 
was not a line expressing obligation, gratitude, or even 
friendliness to the United States, not a word of recogni- 
tion either of the service rendered by this Government 



338 Orville H. Piatt 

or of our interest in the island's future. It was plainly 
the short-sighted plan of the delegates to submit to 
Congress, before adjournment on March 4th, a consti- 
tution ignoring altogether the question of the future 
relations between the two countries, relying on Congress 
to recognize the constitution and direct the withdrawal 
of American troops, leaving the Cubans to do as they 
might please in establishing new relations. 

As this purpose dawned gradually on the leaders 
of the Senate, they began to consider whether legisla- 
tion should not be undertaken immediately to deter- 
mine our future relations. It was the short session 
of Congress, and the threatened filibuster against the 
shipping bill made it extremely doubtful whether any 
measures except the regular supply bills could be en- 
acted. Mr. Piatt as Chairman of the Committee on 
Cuban Relations was the responsible leader to whom 
others looked for guidance. For a time he feared that 
it would not be possible to enact in so short a time 
legislation of such far-reaching consequence and he was 
inclined to leave President McKinley to deal as best he 
could with Cuba, calling Congress together in extra- 
ordinary session, if need be, before withdrawing United 
States troops and turning the island over to its own 
people. But as time went on and the unreasonableness 
of the Cuban Convention became more apparent, he 
determined at last to make the attempt at shaping the 
necessary law before the 4th of March. Accordingly 
on January 30, 1901, he sent the following note to the 
Republican members of the Committee : 

I think it very important that the Republican members 
of the Committee on Relations with Cuba should have an 
informal conference, and therefore ask that you will meet 



The Piatt Amendment 339 

with other RepubHcan members at Senator Chandler's 
house at three o'clock Sunday afternoon. 

In Senator Chandler's diary for February 3d, is this 
laconic entry : 

At 3 O. H. Piatt, Aldrich, McMillan, Spooner.and Cullom 
called (142 1 I street) and we talked of Cuban affairs. 

One week later there is the further entry : 

At 2 Piatt, McMillan, Aldrich, Cullom, and Spooner at 
my house, on Cuba. 

Of what was said at these meetings there is no ofificial 
record, but Mr. Chandler has given his recollection of 
the first conference : 

There was free talk concerning the conditions which 
the United States would wish to ask of Cuba and which we 
hoped the sensitiveness of the Cuban people would not keep 
them from acceding to. There being a fear that Cuba might 
not like to incorporate into the body of her free constitu- 
tion any clauses giving rights to another country, it was 
agreed that it would be best to propose that our conditions 
if not inserted in the constitution should be recited in "an 
ordinance appended thereto." It was easily agreed that 
we must insist upon the continued maintenance by Cuba 
of all the sanitary arrangements to prevent the spread of 
disease which had been made during our occupancy, these 
being considered as of vital importance to the United States 
as well as Cuba. The danger that the newly liberated 
people would plunge recklessly in debt was the most serious 
subject of conversation. The tendency in such cases was 
adverted to, and we all quickly agreed that there must be 
some provision that Cuba should not run into debt beyond 
her means to pay. The danger that in such an event the 
money would be borrowed in Europe and that in default 
of payment European Powers would threaten to occupy 
Cuba was comprehended. Every provision that could be 



340 Orville H. Piatt 

thought of as desirable and that was afterwards adopted 
was discussed. It was readily agreed that Cuba should be 
asked to consent that the United States might intervene 
to preserve the independence of Cuba and good order and 
freedom throughout the new republic. At the last I 
ventured to say that if conditions were formulated and 
proposed by Congress we ought to add that Cuba should 
issue to the United States one hundred millions of four per 
cent, fifty-year bonds as a partial compensation for the 
expenses of our war to liberate the island from bondage to 
Spain. Mr. Spooner promptly objected and said that it 
would not do for us to demand money from Cuba as the 
price of our services in giving to her freedom. I assented 
to the idea that we might not insist upon the reimbursement 
but said that I thought that as Cuba would give careful 
consideration to all our requests, it might be well to suggest 
to her people the absolute justice of a money payment. Is 
it not good policy in formulating our proposition to include 
something which, although just and fair, may be sur- 
rendered if objection is made to our plan as a whole? But 
Mr. Spooner, with his unsophistical nature, failed to com- 
prehend these tactics and did not consent to them. 

No plan at this conference was placed upon paper. 
The general feeling was that it would be difficult to secure 
action by Congress and that the Democratic members of 
the Committee would probably oppose and delay and thus 
defeat any plan which we might offer to them. 

There was further informal talk among members of 
the Committee, and Mr. Piatt was in daily conference 
with the President and the Secretary of War. It was 
finally determined that as an independent measure 
would stand little chance of enactment in the few days 
remaining of the session, it would be necessary to attach 
the legislation to one of the great Appropriation bills 
in order to insure action before the 4th of March. 



The Piatt Amendment 341 

There was considerable apprehension in regard to the 
attitude of the Democratic members of the Committee. 
Were they to show a disposition to play for political 
position they could easily at that stage of the proceed- 
ings by dilatory tactics prevent action before the 4th of 
March and thus force an extraordinary session of Con- 
gress to the embarrassment of the majority leaders and 
of the administration. Greatly to the relief of Senator 
Piatt and other Republicans, an intimation came, at 
the critical moment, from the minority members of the 
Committee that no serious opposition would be offered 
to the proposed measure. This patriotic attitude of 
Senators Teller, Money, Butler, and Taliaferro, was fre- 
quently referred to gratefully by Senator Piatt in later 
years. 

The final drafting of the resolution as is usually the 
case in the work of a legislative committee was left in 
the hands of the chairman, and Senator Piatt in con- 
sultation with that master of parliamentary phrase- 
ology. Senator Spooner, prepared the Amendment as it 
now stands. 

When the measure had been given its lasting form 
by Piatt and Spooner, a formal meeting of the Cuban 
Relations Committee was called, and, by resolution of 
the Committee adopted on February 25th. Senator 
Piatt on the same day submitted the following amend- 
ment to the Army Appropriation bill : 

That in fulfilment of the declaration contained in the 
joint resolution approved April 20, 1898, entitled: "For 
the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, 
demanding that the government of Spain relinquish its 
authority and government in the island of Cuba, and 
withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban 
waters, and directing the President of the United States 



342 Orville H. Piatt 

to use the land and naval forces of the United States to 
carry these resolutions into effect," the President is hereby- 
authorized to "leave the government and control of the 
island of Cuba to its people" so soon as a government shall 
have been established in said island under a constitution 
which, either as a part thereof or in an ordinance appended 
thereto, shall define the future relations of the United States 
with Cuba, substantially as follows: 

I. 

That the government of Cuba shall never enter into any 
treaty or other compact with any foreign power or powers 
which will impair or tend to impair the independence of 
Cuba, nor in any manner authorize or permit any foreign 
power or powers to obtain by colonization or for military 
or naval purposes or otherwise, lodgment in nor control 
over any portion of said island. 

II. 

That said government shall not assume or contract any 
public debt, to pay the interest upon which, and to make 
reasonable sinking fund provision for the ultimate discharge 
of which, the ordinary revenues of the island, after defray- 
ing the current expenses of government shall be inadequate. 

III. 

That the government of Cuba consents that the United 
States may exercise the right to intervene for the preserva- 
tion of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a govern- 
ment adequate for the protection of life, property and 
individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with 
respect to Cuba imposed by the treaty of Paris on the United 
States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the govern- 
ment of Cuba. 



The Piatt Amendment 343 



IV. 



That all acts of the United States in Cuba during its 
military occupancy thereof are ratified and validated, and 
all lawful rights acquired thereunder shall be maintained 
and protected. 



That the government of Cuba will execute, and as far 
as necessary extend, the plans already devised or other 
plans to be mutually agreed upon for the sanitation of 
the cities of the island, to the end that a recurrence of 
epidemic and infectious diseases may be prevented, thereby 
assuring protection to the people and commerce of Cuba, 
as well as to the commerce of the southern ports of the 
United States and the people residing therein. 

VI. 

That the Isle of Pines shall be omitted from the pro- 
posed constitutional boundaries of Cuba, the title thereto 
being left to future adjustment by treaty. 

VII. 

That to enable the United States to maintain the in- 
dependence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as 
well as for its own defence, the government of Cuba will 
sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for 
coaling or naval stations at certain specified points, to be 
agreed upon with the President of the United States. 

VIII. 

That by way of further assurance the government of 
Cuba will embody the foregoing provisions in a permanent 
treaty with the United States. 

The Amendment was adopted on February 27th, by 
a vote of 43 to 20 — a strict party division. There was 



344 Orville H. Piatt 

hardly a word of debate on the floor of the Senate, 
members of the Committee purposely refraining from 
speech, on account of the necessity for speedy action at 
that late hour in the session, while the minority with a 
few exceptions were content to confine their opposition 
to the recording of their votes, although had the Amend- 
ment been offered as a separate measure it would prob- 
ably never have reached a vote. The House accepted 
the Amendment promptly, and on March 2d it became 
a law. 

The Cuban Convention was in no hurry to incorporate 
the terms of the Amendment in the constitution which 
was in process of construction. Many of its members 
suspected the motives of the United States. The 
question arose as to whether the adoption of the Amend- 
ment would leave Cuba an independent state ; whether 
the third clause did not in effect establish a protectorate 
or suzerainty on the part of the United States. In April 
a Committee of Delegates appeared in Washington to 
lay these doubts before the Secretary of War and to find 
out whether in the event of Cuba's compliance she 
could expect reciprocal trade relations with the United 
States. As to the question regarding independence 
Secretary Root consulted with Senator Piatt who replied 
as follows : 

The Amendment was carefully drafted with a view to 
avoid any possible claim that its acceptance by the Cuban 
Constitutional Convention would result in the establishment 
of a protectorate or suzerainty, or in any way interfere 
with the independence of Cuba, and speaking for myself, 
it seems impossible that any such construction can be 
placed upon that clause. I think the Amendment must 
be considered as a whole, and it must be evident upon its 
reading that its well-defined purpose is to secure and safe- 



The Piatt Amendment 345 

guard Cuban independence and to establish at the outset a 
definite understanding of the friendly disposition of the. 
United States towards the Cuban people, and its expressed 
intention to assist them, if necessary, in the maintenance of 
such independence. 

These are my views, and though, as you suggest, I can- 
not speak for the whole Congress, my belief is that such 
purpose was well understood by that body.^ 

1 In an article which appeared in the World's Work for May, 1901, 
only a few weeks after the adjournment of Congress and a little 
while before the Cuban Constitutional Convention had concluded 
its work and accepted the terms of the United States, Senator Piatt 
thus stated the case: 

"Two solutions only are possible. One, the annexation of the 
island by the United States; the other, the establishment of an 
independent republic there in which the vital and just interests 
both of Cuba and the United States shall be defined and main- 
tained. 

"The project of annexation may, and ought to be, dismissed. 
It should not for a moment be considered except in case of the 
direst necessity. The people of Cuba, by reason of race and char- 
acteristics, cannot be easily assimilated by us. In these respects 
they have little in common with us. Their presence in the Ameri- 
can union, as a state, would be most disturbing, and we have 
already asserted, as the deliberate conclusion of Congress, that they 
ought to be free and independent. There is nothing to be gained, 
much, even honor, to be lost, by the annexation of Cuba. 

"The real question, then, is, how can an independent republic 
be established there under conditions and circumstances which 
shall best subserve the interests of the people both of Cuba and of 
the Unit.ed States? That our people have interests in Cuba which 
must be subserved and protected, goes without saying. We 
can not, and will not, permit any European Power, much less a 
hostile or unfriendly Power, to acquire rights or privileges in Cuba 
to our disadvantage. The essence of the Monroe Doctrine asserted, 
and justly insisted upon for nearly eighty years, forbids it. Nor 
can the United States permit the existence of a government in 
Cuba in which peace and order, the protection of life and property, 
and the maintenance of all international obligations are not ob- 
served. In respect to the future government of Cuba our interests 
and those of the Cuban people are identical; the government of 
Cuba must be stable, as well as republican in form. Again, our 



346 Orville H. Piatt 

Sufficient assurances were also given in regard to 
reciprocity, and finally after much ba.cking and filling 
the convention in June accepted the terms in such form 
as to satisfy the administration. In writing to a mem- 
ber of the Convention, while the acceptance was still 

obligations to the world at large, created and assumed by the act 
of intervention, demand of us that we become responsible both for 
the character and maintenance of the new government. If duty- 
required us to see to it that Cuba was free, duty equally requires 
us to see to it that the Cuba of the future shall be both peaceful 
and prosperous. . . . 

"We cannot, if we would, honorably relieve ourselves from our 
treaty obligations to see that the life and property of Spaniards 
and those Cubans who did not join in the revolution are protected 
by the new government. Perfunctory advice to that government 
will not meet the full measure of our obligation. Our work was 
only half done when Cuba was liberated from its oppressor. A 
nation which undertakes to put an end to bad government in a 
neighboring country must also see that just and good government 
follows. Nations have duties to perform as well as interests to 
guard and protect, a truth which it is encouraging to note is being 
better understood throughout the world now than ever before. 
From the high plane of duty alone, not less than by self-interest, 
the United States is committed to the maintenance of good govern- 
ment in Cuba, and its policy must first of all be determined by 
this consideration. It can not escape responsibility; it must meet 
it manfully. . . . 

"The conditions thus proposed by Congress are as manifestly 
in the interest of Cuba as of the United States. The keynote of 
these propositions is that Cuba shall be and remain independent 
under a stable republican government which the United States will 
assist in maintaining against foreign aggression or domestic dis- 
order. Cuba needs this, because it will be practically powerless 
either to repel foreign aggression or to maintain peace and order 
at home if the turbulence of the past shall reappear. 

"The new government of Cuba will have neither an army not 
a navy. There are something like six millions of dollars of Spanish 
bonds outstanding, for which the revenues of Cuba were pledged 
at the time of their issue. These bonds are held largely in Germany 
and France. It is entirely probable that Cuba being left without 
any means of defence, these governments on behalf of their citizens 
would demand and endeavor to enforce their assumption. Cuba'3 



The Piatt Amendment 347 

pending, Senator Piatt thus expressed himself on the 
question of independence: 

I cannot help thinking that there has been some mis- 
understanding about the purpose of my Amendment. It 
seemed to me impossible that it could be taken as limiting 
Cuban independence. The preamble declares that it is 
to carry out the so-called Teller resolution. It recognizes 
Cuban independence in terms in three of the clauses and 
indirectly, in the other four. In two of the clauses it 
speaks of treaties to be made, and we certainly make treaties 
only with independent governments. The clause relating 

only guarantee against this v/ill be the fact that any nation at- 
tempting to compel it to pay this indebtedness will understand 
that it has the United States to deal with. Between revolutionists 
and Spaniards and Cubans who were loyal to Spain there is little 
love. With no army to repress disorder, it is certainly within the 
limit of reasonable probability that the revolutionary and turbu- 
lent party may attempt the destruction or confiscation of Spanish 
and Cuban property which the new government would be utterly 
powerless to prevent. We most certainly owe a duty to our own 
citizens in Cuba that they shall be protected in the enjoyment 
of their property and kept free from the dangers which attend 
revolutionary uprisings. Indeed, any one who knows public 
sentiment in Cuba is aware that it is expected by Cuban people 
that if difficulty, either foreign or domestic, shall arise, the United 
States will be called upon to meet it. Even those who insist that 
nothing should be put into the Constitution recognizing our right 
to do so, say that the United States will do it as a matter of course. 
. . . The United States needs this mutual arrangement because, 
for its own defence, it cannot permit any foreign power to dominate, 
control, or obtain a foothold in this hemisphere or its adjacent 
territory, and cannot tolerate such revolutions or disorders upon 
an island so near our coast, as frequently occur in southern American 
republics; more than all, because it stands pledged in honor to its 
own citizens, to the citizens of Cuba, and to all the world to main- 
tain quiet and peace and good government in Cuba. In a word, 
Cuba needs self-government, peace, tranquillity and prosperity. 
The United States asks for nothing more than this, but it recog- 
nizes its obligation and insists upon its right to see that such 
results are to be permanently secured." 



348 Orville H. Piatt 

to sanitation involves an agreement between two equally 
independent powers, and the ratification of the acts of the 
military government can only be by an independent power. 
So each clause of the resolution is based upon the idea 
not only that Cuba was to be independent but that the 
United States recognized that fact. All that we ask is that 
Cuba shall assent to our right to help her maintain her 
independence and to protect our own interests. Of course 
we can only determine treaty relations with an independent 
and fully established government. The very first step 
at reciprocal trade relations is the establishment of the 
Cuban government. No one man can speak for the future 
action of his nation, but I can say this that I find in the 
United States but one sentiment and that is that as soon 
as Cuba shall have put herself in the proper position to 
make a commercial treaty there will be every disposition 
to agree to trade relations which shall be for the benefit of 
both countries. There may be different ideas as to the 
precise terms of such a treaty, both here and in Cuba, but 
that we will strive for the same end, namely trade relations 
which shall be for the advantage of both nations, I cannot 
for a moment doubt. I have felt that the Cuban people 
have seen and understood this all the while. 

To an American resident of Cuba, he had this to say : 

Personally, I was in favor of very much more stringent 
measures requiring much more as to our future relations, 
but in legislation you have got to consider the preponder- 
ance of public sentiment. As you say, it is difficult enough 
to bring those Cuban delegates to an acceptance of the 
terms we propose. If we had proposed more stringent 
terms, we should not only have had that difficulty vastly 
increased but we should have had a party in the United 
States and in Congress giving aid and comfort to the Cuban 
radicals. My own judgment is that when they conceded 
to us the right of intervention and naval stations, as set 
forth in the Amendment, the United States gets an effective 



The Piatt Amendment 349 

and moral position which may become something more 
than a moral position and which will prevent trouble there. 
It is easy to say that we ought to insist on more, it was im- 
possible to pass through Congress anything more drastic 
than we did. It is a mistake, if I may say so, for the people 
of Cuba who are conservative and who have property in- 
terests to be cared for to refuse to exert their influence to 
make the new government of Cuba what it ought to be. I 
think I recognize all the difficulties of the situation, but it 
does seem to me that the able, forceful, and conservative 
men of Cuba must do something to help themselves and 
I think they will finally see this. At any rate, the United 
States will always, under the so-called Piatt Amendment, 
be in a position to straighten out things if they get seriously 
bad. I see nothing for it except to try the experiment of 
an independent republican government in Cuba, and, while 
I see the dangers, I think we may hope some day that the 
experiment will be fairly successful. ^ 

At the time of its adoption it was recognized generally 
that Senator Piatt had been the principal force in 
Congress behind the Amendment, which naturally 
became identified with his name, but long after its 
enactment and when it had become recognized as one 
of the epoch-making documents of the country's history 
the question was raised as to its real authorship. This 
question is bound to arise always in cases where more 
than one person is entrusted with the formulation of 
papers embodying a general determination. In the 
Review of Reviews for January, 1903, appeared a 
laudatory article by Walter Wellman on the work of 
Secretary Root in the Cabinet in which occurred the 
following passage: 

The solution of the relations of the United States to the 
new nation — a solution which not only assured that a Cuban 

> Letter to E. F. Atkins, June ii, 1901. 



350 Orville H. Piatt 

republic should come into being, but that it should be pre- 
served under the sheltering wing of the great American 
eagle; a solution so statesmanlike, so obviously a work of 
the highest genius, that it must long serve as a model — was 
embodied in what is known as the Piatt Amendment. Well, 
Mr. Root was the author of the Piatt Amendment. He 
wrote it, almost verbatim as it stands to-day, in a letter of 
instructions to General Wood for that officer's guidance 
in dealing with the Cuban Constitutional Convention. It 
was afterward submitted to the Senate Committee on Cuba, 
of which that really great Senator, Mr. Piatt of Connecticut, 
is Chairman, and, after slight modification, was placed upon 
the statutes by Congress, and ratified in the constitution 
of the new republic. Thus Mr. Root not only created, 
formed, moulded, trained, nursed, shaped the Cuban nation, 
but wrote with his own hand its Magna Charta. 

This paragraph was v^ddely copied and aroused con- 
siderable discussion. In commenting on it a friendly 
writer in the Hartford Courant said : 

Our Mr. Piatt no doubt could have written the Piatt 
Amendment had it been necessary; but he also apparently 
was a strong man to know the right thing, and to back it 
up by his parliamentary skill, when he found that another 
hand had already substantially turned the right provisions 
into words. An amendment written by Secretary Root 
and passed into law by Orville H. Piatt ought to be as 
nearly the proper an4 safe thing as human legislation can 
be. 

It was not Senator Piatt's custom to make use of the 
newspapers to advance his own claims for political 
credit, and he did not enter a controversy even when 
there was a possibility of his being deprived of the tiny 
meed of credit which had come to him after a genera- 
tion of great public service almost devoid of general 



The Piatt Amendment 351 

public recognition. He could not let the statement in 
Mr. Wellman's article go entirely unchallenged, how- 
ever, among his friends, and when he saw this reference 
in his own home paper he wrote to Charles Hopkins 
Clark, the editor, a personal friend of many years' 
standing ; 

January i, 1904. 

My dear Mr. Clark: 

Referring to the Courant of December 31st, and the 
reviews of magazine articles, I find that Walter Wellman 
thinks that Secretary Root wrote with his own hand what 
is known as the " Piatt Amendment," and that after quoting 
Mr. Wellman your book-review man thinks that I could 
have written it if it had been necessary, etc. 

It is not a matter that I care enough about to make any 
issue of it, but Mr. Wellman is a little off. The letter of 
instructions to General Wood was written by Secretary 
Root after the Piatt Amendment had been much considered 
by the Republican members of the Cuban Committee. The 
original draft was my own,%nd contained substantially the 
terms on which the withdrawal of American forces was to 
take place, as shown in the instructions to Wood. It was 
changed from time to time, somewhat in language but not 
in spirit, in consultations both with the Republicans of the 
Committee, President McKinley, and Secretary Root. A 
final consultation between myself and Senator Spooner put 
the document in its complete form. 

I make this statement, not for pubHcation, but simply 
for your own information. 

Very truly yours, 

O. H. Platt. 

Mr. Clark felt that the information contained in this 
letter should be made public and accordingly he wrote 
to ask permission to print it in such a way that Senator 
Piatt's connection with the publication would not be 



352 Orville H. Piatt 

known. It is related that when this request came in the 
mail, the Senator's secretary, who had seen the original 
draft of the Amendment in the Senator's own hand- 
writing in pencil with occasional interlineations, asked, 
"Why not permit Mr. Clark or some one to tell the 
truth about this?" He looked up quickly and replied 
seriously and with emphasis : 

What difference does it make who wrote the Piatt Amend- 
ment so long as it serves the purpose intended f Just let us 
be quiet ; it will all blow over and there will be nothing 
about it in a week. 

Then he dictated a dispatch telling Mr. Clark on no 
account to publish anything concerning him in regard 
to the Piatt Amendment, and followed it up with a 
letter in which he said : 

I do not wish to get into the newspapers about the maga- 
zine article written by Wellman. I cannot do it now any- 
way, because a statement of my connection with the Piatt 
Amendment would need to be carefully made from dates and 
documents, and I have no time for it at present. I may 
some day do it for my own satisfaction, but, above all things, 
I do not want any newspaper or magazine exploitation 
of it, which would do me no good, and by this time the whole 
matter has been forgotten, so please do not say anything 
about it in the Courant. Some time I will tell you the whole 
story. 

John H. Flagg wrote him : 

I have read Walter Wellman's article on Root in the 
current number of the Review of Reviews, wherein he states 
unqualifiedly that Root and not you was the author of the 
so-called "Piatt Amendment." Is this statement true? 
I as well as your countless friends had taken peculiar satis- 
faction in believing you to have been its author, and I have 
never seen any other claim asserted until now. 



The Piatt Amendment 353 

In the course of his reply to this letter Senator Piatt 
said: 

It (the Piatt Amendment) started with an original 
draft of four propositions by me, submitted to President 
McKinley and Secretary Root. It was the subject of many 
conversations with Mr. Root, and many consultations be- 
tween the Republican members of the Senate Committee. 
Its final draft was the work of myself and Senator Spooner. 
While these consultations were going on, Secretary Root 
gave the order to General Wood, stating what the President 
insisted upon, and that is all there is to it. The meat of 
the whole thing was in my original propositions, long an- 
terior to the issuance of the order. 

The propositions referred to are probably the 
following, which are found in typewritten form among 
Mr. Piatt's papers, with the pencilled memorandum at 
the head, in his own hand: "Proposition submitted to 
the President by me": 

Provisions which should be incorporated in the Cuban 
constitution : 

I, 

Ratification of the acts of the government of miHtary 
occupation, and the protection of interests acquired there- 
under. 

II. 

The right of intervention to maintain the independence 
of Cuba, for the protection of life and property therein, its 
permanent pacification, and the stability of its government. 

III. 

Naval stations, and a force necessary for their main- 
tenance. 
23 



354 Orville H. Piatt 

IV. 

Supervision of treaties with foreign powers. 

V. 

Supervision of the bonded debt of the island. 

It may be set down as an established historical fact 
then that the Piatt Amendment was really what it 
purported to be — the work of O. H. Piatt. ^ It was he 
who foresaw the imperative need of some declaration 
by Congress; it was he who at the very beginning of 
consultation suggested the general lines to be followed 
in the declaration; he had a chief share in fixing its 

1 At different stages of the consultations various members of 
the Committee submitted suggestions and tentative drafts. One 
suggestion by Senator Piatt, which he called "Preliminary," and 
which was to be proposed by him as an amendment to the Army 
Appropriation bill, reads as follows: 

Amendment intended to be proposed by Mr. Piatt (Connecticut), 
to the bill H. R. 140 17, making appropriation for the support of 
the army for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1902. 

That the United States hereby declares its purpose to withdraw 
its military occupation of Cuba whenever a government shall have 
been established under a constitution which, being in other respects 
acceptable, shall contain provisions by which the following enu- 
merated rights shall be secured to the United States, and such 
government shall have been recognized as an independent govern- 
ment by the President: 

First, to maintain troops in said island for a period not exceeding 
ten years, for the purpose of assuring its complete and continued 
pacification, and the maintenance of its obligations, domestic and 
international. 

Second, the right of the United States to maintain two coaling 
and naval stations in said island. 

Third, provisions which limit the right of the Government of 
Cuba to incur bonded debt or obligations without the consent of 
the United States. 

Fourth, provisions to the effect that treaties with foreign nations 
shall only be made by the Government of Cuba with the assent 



The Piatt Amendment 355 

lasting form; moreover, its smooth passage through 
the Senate was the result in no small degree of the gen- 
eral confidence in his integrity and statesmanship. It 

of the United States, and that simultaneously with the recognition 
of the independence of the Government of Cuba a convention pro- 
viding for the commercial and other relations to subsist between said 
Government of Cuba and the Government of the United States, 
acceptable to the President of the United States, shall be entered 
into and executed. 

Senator Chandler made a draft of an amendment to be proposed 
to the Naval Appropriation bill as follows: 

That the naval and military forces of the United States shall be 
removed from the waters and harbors of the island of Cuba when- 
ever, as a result of a fair and peaceful election, a national govern- 
ment shall be established under a republican constitution and 
certain rights of the United States shall be secured either under such 
Cuban constitution or by treaty with the United States, taking 
effect simultaneously with such constitution, namely: 



The right of the United States to intervene for ten years for the 
protection of Spaniards in Cuba in accordance with the treaty 
between the United States and Spain. 

II. 

The right to prevent the recognition or assumption by Cuba 
without the consent of the United States of any indebtedness 
(except to Cuban soldiers) growing out of transactions prior to 
the relinquishment of Spanish sovereignty over Cuba. 

III. 

The right to have and hold a coaling station at some suitable 
harbor. 

IV. 

The right to one hundred and fifty million dollars of bonds of 
the Cuban Government payable in forty years, and redeemable 
after twenty years, bearing interest at the rate of four per cent. 

Senator Cullom proposed the following: 

And the President is authorized to recognize the independence 
of the republic of Cuba, and withdraw the troops of the United 



356 Orville H. Piatt 

does not detract from the established fame of Secretary 
Root that this acknowledgment should be made. 



States therefrom whenever it shall appear to his satisfaction that 
the inhabitants of that island have established and are prepared 
to maintain a stable government ; and whenever such government 
shall by treaty recognize and acknowledge the right and authority 
of the United States to intervene by armed forces or otherwise 
for the presen'ation of peace and the protection of the property 
of citizens of the United States and foreigners in the island of Cuba; 
to preserve the financial credit of said government; to protect the 
commercial interests of the United States; and shall leave per- 
petually two safe and convenient harbors, one near the eastern 
and one near the western limits of said island, with sufficient land 
for repair and supply stations for the na\'y of the United States, 
such harbors to be selected under the direction of the Secretary 
of the Xavy; and whenever the republic of Cuba shall by treaty 
agree to submit for the ratification of the Senate of the United 
States all treaties, protocols, and other agreements touching its 
relations with other governments than the United States. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE PORTO-RICAN TARIFF 

Our " Plain Duty " toward Porto Rico — Organizes Opposition to 

Free Trade with the Island — A Successful Parliamentary 

Campaign — Letter to Lyman Abbott. 

ON the conclusion of the war with Spain, with our 
assumption of strange territorial responsibilities, 
Senator Piatt as a protectionist was up against a new 
problem. The first important question to be settled 
with reference to Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines 
was how far it would be practicable for them to merge 
with us commercially, what obligations we owed them 
which could be satisfied without injustice to our own 
people. Mr. Piatt had been a staunch advocate of x.v 

expansion. There was never a time after the beginning 
of hostilities when he did not hold that Porto Rico and 
the Philippines must become possessions of the United 
States; but he was no less a friend to protection of 
American industries than to expansion of American 
territor}^ and he contended that our insular possessions, 
politically and commercially, should not be brought 
into too close a union with us. 

Porto Rico presented the first question for settle- 
ment. The long period of suspense accompanying the 
change in political control had left the island in a bad 
way. She had lost the advantage which she formerly 
had in her two principal markets. Spanish and Cuban 

357 



358 Orville H. Piatt 

ports, hitherto open, were now closed to her products 
except upon equal terms with the rest of the world, 
while she had not yet found her way into the markets 
of the United States. A hurricane which swept over 
the island in August, 1899, had left 100,000 people 
homeless. Many faced starvation. It was imperative 
that the United States establish civil authority there 
as quickly as possible and take immediate steps for the 
permanent relief of the distressed inhabitants. 

At the beginning of the Fifty-sixth Congress in 1899, 
President McKinley, swayed by feeHngs of humanity 
and a praiseworthy desire to encourage cordial relations 
with the people of the island, incorporated in his annual 
message a paragraph recommending the establishment 
, of a civil government and declaring it to be our " plain 
i ( ' duty " to abolish all customs tariffs between the United 
States and Porto Rico and give the island's products 
free access to our markets. It was a taking proposal, 
for it contained two telling ingredients of popularity. 
It appealed to the generous impulses of a people still 
glowing with enthusiasm kindled in the war for the 
emancipation of Cuba and it accorded with the pro- 
gramme of those who, having opposed the acquisition 
of the Philippines, were now busily engaged in arguing 
that over territory once acquired the provisions of the 
Constitution extended of its own force. Thus it met 
with the immediate approval of the great majority of 
the press and of the people, and Congress was expected 
to acquiesce without undue delay. Chairman Payne 
of the Ways and Means Committee promptly presented 
in the House a bill to carry the recommendation into 
effect, and a measure was likewise introduced in the 
Senate. It seemed ungracious not to join in the 
advancement of so philanthropic a purpose and yet 



The Porto-Rican Tariff 359 

there were a few who could not see their way to do it. 
Chief among these was Senator Piatt. He perceived 
at once in the proposal a menace to the satisfactory 
adjustment of the relations between the United States 
and its extra-territorial possessions, and after careful 
consideration of everything at stake he made up his 
mind that he could not give his approval to the Presi- 
dent's plan. For a time he kept his own counsel, 
but when he went home to Connecticut during the holi- 
day recess, and thought it all over there among his own 
people, he could remain quiet no longer. On December 
28th, he wrote from Meriden to Senator Foraker, who 
as Chairman of the Committee on Porto Rico and the 
Pacific Islands would have most to do with the pro- 
jected legislation, a letter setting out the conclusions 
at which he had arrived: 

I am much distressed by the recommendation in the re- 
port of the Secretary of War and also in the message of the 
President to the effect that acts should be passed ad- 
mitting goods from Porto Rico into our ports free of duty. 
I cannot but think that the alleged reason for the necessity 
of doing so does not exist. The principal production of 
Porto Rico is coffee; the next in importance are tobacco 
and sugar — fruits are of but little importance. The ground 
upon which such legislation is recommended is that we have 
destroyed their market with Spain, and we ought to make 
good by giving them free markets here. As to coffee, it 
is free now. As to sugar, they have just as good a chance as 
the Cuban planter has, and so far as extending the sugar in- 
dustry in Porto Rico, by giving them free trade, I am inclined 
to think that would amount to very little; for if I under- 
stand the character of their lands, sugar can only be raised 
to a limited extent, and on the low lands. As to tobacco 
and cigars, if they were made free there would be no particu- 
lar demand for them in the United States either now or at 



36o Orville H. Piatt 

any future time, unless the taste for Porto Rico tobacco 
could be cultivated, so that I think the supposed prospec- 
tive advantage to the island has been greatly exaggerated. 
The political effect of such action would I fear be very 
disastrous. I do not think I am unduly apprehensive. We 
have carried our elections upon the policy of protection, and 
we have held our voters to the Republican party because we 
made them think we were honestly in favor of protection 
and therefore the true friend of the American laborer. If 
we by act of Congress admit goods free from Porto Rico 
we shall not only affect the people engaged in the growing 
of beet sugar, the sugar industry, the tobacco growers and 
cigar manufacturers, but we shall be charged with the 
abandonment of our protective principle. That principle 
we have always asserted was that we proposed to protect 
our laborers against the competition of the cheap and 
ignorant laborer. The whole Chinese question turns on 
that. Now if we let goods from Porto Rico in free, we put 
our home laborers into competition with the cheapest of 
cheap labor. I already hear the mutterings of the coming 
storm. It will be useless to tell a mechanic or any other 
kind of laborer that he is not going to be hurt by free 
goods from Porto Rico ; he will see that we have abandoned 
protection. 

Anti-expansion has gained more strength from the 
laboring element just from the belief that free goods 
were to be admitted from our new possessions than from 
any other class of our citizens, and, such a statute once 
passed, the muttering storm as it sweeps onward will ac- 
quire velocity and force, and we shall have an issue in the 
next campaign harder to meet than the anti-expansion, 
the anti-trust, or the free-silver issue. We have been so 
long receiving free goods from our Territories that there is 
ground for the idea that we must do so under the Constitu- 
tion. As to any of our newly acquired possessions, it is of 
the utmost importance that we settle now, by legislation in 
this Congress, our right to put duties upon goods coming 



The Porto-Rican Tariff 361 

from any of our new possessions. Whether it be the same 
duties that we levy on goods from foreign countries, or 
whether they be preferential duties that we levy on goods 
coming from Porto Rico, the fact that we levy any duty will 
settle, and this is the only way that we can settle, the appre- 
hension that we must eventually receive goods free of duty 
from Cuba and the Philippines. Hawaii does not need her 
goods to come into our ports free, for the treaty of reciprocity 
is to stand and pretty much everything which we use is 
free already. Besides I think it can well be enacted in the 
Hawaiian bill that except as to the goods which were made 
free by our reciprocity treaty, goods coming from Hawaiian 
ports should be subject to duty, either the same as other 
foreign countries or preferential duties. The trouble ahead 
of us, I can see, is more with the Philippines and with Cuba, 
when it comes to us as everyone expects it will finally come, 
than with Porto Rico and Hawaii; but it is the first step that 
counts and it is the establishment of a precedent that gives 
trouble. I cannot state too emphatically my apprehensions 
of the political consequences which will follow making • 
goods from any of our new possessions free, and I feel as 
if I must call your attention to it. 

But he did not set out rashly on a crusade against 
the recognized head of his party. He appreciated the 
importance of some understanding with the Executive 
before going so far in his dissenting course, and soon 
after his return to Washington he went to the White 
House fortified with arguments to show the President 
the dangers in the path upon which the feet of the 
administration were set. He found Mr. McKinley, as 
always, in a reasonable mood, and he came away from 
the interview satisfied that in opposing the admis- 
sion of Porto-Rican products free of duty he would 
not run counter to the wishes of the administration, 
provided some consideration were shown the island in 



o 



62 Orville H. Piatt 



J 



the way of a discriminating tariff. Thus sustained he 
undertook to organize the Republican forces. It was a 
dehcate task requiring tact as well as courage, together 
with complete mastery of the subject in hand; for it 
was no light thing to marshal his own party against 
the President's declared policy while maintaining 
personal and political relations unbroken. That Sena- 
tor Piatt succeeded in accomplishing his object, leaving 
at the end a satisfied and united party, was due to 
qualities not often found combined. The feeling with 
which he entered on his mission is revealed in a letter 
which he wrote early in the discussion : 

I do not wish to be accused of being courageous, but it 
has required a great deal of courage to withstand what 
was apparently the purpose of the administration, of the 
President and Secretary Root, with reference to Porto 
Rico, but I think the sentiment here has changed and is 
coming around to the idea that we must not admit that any 
of our new possessions are a part of the United States 
in the sense that the Constitution extends itself over them, 
or that we must have free trade with them. I really 
think that that danger has passed now, though it was 
imminent. Exactly what the outcome will be no one can 
foresee. I think it almost suicidal from the standpoint 
of government and political policy to attempt to do any- 
thing just at present. We have not had time to think it 
out in detail and we are liable to get committed without 
knowing it. We ought to continue military government 
until after the next Presidential election. . . , The appeal 
of Secretary Root to the President that we have destroyed 
the trade of Porto Rico is not well grounded, and the recom- 
mendation that we shall give them free trade to rehabilitate 
them is entirely unnecessary. A preferential duty would 
do that as fully as it ought to be done. Free trade with 
Porto Rico would make some sugar planters millionaires 



The Porto-Rican Tariff 363 

but would not help the people any more than a reasonable 
reduction of tariff duties would. Free trade in cigars would 
transfer the cigar-making industry from the United States 
to Cuba. The American Tobacco Company has already 
begun to purchase manufactories and plantations in antici- 
pation of it. We cannot give free trade to Porto Rico 
without getting into trouble in Cuba at once. They will de- 
mand it as a condition of forming a government there which 
shall be satisfactory to us and making a treaty which 
will protect our interests there in the future. I do not 
think that the evils of free trade with Porto Rico are at all 
appreciated yet. . . . This whole matter is serious. The y 
danger is mitigated. But there is still danger ahead. 

He embodied his own plan in an amendment which, 
on January 24, 1900, he proposed to the Senate bill pro- 
viding a government for the island of Porto Rico. The 
amendment fixed a duty upon imports from Porto Rico 
equivalent to eighty per cent, of the duties levied upon 
like articles imported into the United States from 
foreign countries, and specified that the moneys thus 
collected should be held in the United States Treasury 
as a separate fund to be used for the government and 
benefit of the island. He also proposed to strike out 
the provision for the election of a delegate to the House 
of Representatives. At the same time in pursuance of 
a consistent policy he offered an amendment to the 
Hawaiian bill doing away with the proposed delegate 
and providing "that until further legislation by Con- 
gress the existing customs regulations of the Hawaiian 
Islands with the United States shall remain unchanged." 

The fight was kept up all winter, and the country was 
set by the ears. The Republicans in Congress who 
blocked our pathway to "plain duty" were denounced 
unmercifully by the press which was substantially a 



364 Orville H. Piatt 

unit for free trade with Porto Rico, not appreciating the 
readiness of the President to accept a modification of 
the legislation he had urged. Public meetings were 
held and resolutions were adopted calling upon the 
insurgent Congressmen to abandon their policy of ob- 
struction. Finally after much discussion and many 
canvasses and conferences a bill was agreed to per- 
mitting the entry of imports from Porto Rico on pay- 
ment of fifteen per cent, of the duties levied upon im- 
ports from foreign countries, the moneys collected to 
be retained in the Treasury for the use of Porto Rico. 
The President signed the bill on April 12th. A bill had 
already become law placing at the disposal of the Presi- 
dent for the benefit of Porto Rico over $2,000,000 which 
had been collected as duty on Porto-Rican imports 
since the evacuation by Spain. When the differences 
were nearing a settlement. Senator Piatt with members 
of his Committee was obliged to visit Cuba on a tour of 
investigation. On his return he found awaiting him a 
letter from Dr. Lyman Abbott, editor of the Outlook 
which had been opposed to any tarift" between Porto 
Rico and the United States, asking him to defend his 
position in the columns of the Outlook: 

I can understand that some reason for such a tariff 
temporarily imposed may be found in the immediate finan- 
cial exigencies of the island. I cannot understand the 
reasons which lead any one to desire to impose a tariff 
on Porto-Rican products for the benefit of our home in- 
dustries. I am very desirous that those reasons should 
be stated in our columns by some one in whose integrity, 
uprightness, and statesmanship the country has confidence, 
because I only wish to get at the truth in this matter 
and to put the truth and the whole truth before our readers. 

To Dr. Abbott's request Mr. Piatt responded in a 



The Porto-Rican Tariff 365 

letter which, while not intended for publication at 
the time, was the most comprehensive statement of 
his contention which he ever made : 

I do not think it is advisable that I should write an 
article for the Outlook which you suggest. I am of course 
a protectionist. I am one because I believe in the system 
of protection as absolutely necessary to the development of 
our industries and our prosperity. There is no more hate- 
ful word in the English language to me than that of " free 
trade." There is nothing which to my mind could be so 
disastrous to our country as the abandonment of the doc- 
trine of protection. We have never prospered without it; 
we have always suffered with free trade and revenue tariff. 
I am not an advocate of protection because it benefits a par- 
ticular industry. I advocate it because I believe without it 
we cannot maintain the welfare and happiness of the people 
who labor in the United States. In other words, that the 
single doctrine and idea of protection is that the laboring 
people of the United States who have become accustomed 
to receive what I may call American wages and thereby to 
advance in education, social affairs, prosperity, and happi- 
ness should not be brought into competition with cheap and 
unintelligent labor of other countries, and I do not believe 
in putting the laborers of the United States who receive 
anywhere from one to five dollars a day into competition 
with the laborers of Porto Rico and the Philippines who 
receive only from nine to thirty cents per day. It is not 
wise, and it is not necessary, and, in the end it would hurt 
the laborers of the United States more than it would 
benefit the laborers of Porto Rico and the Philippines. I 
do not stop to inquire in what industries the competition 
will exist. I know it will exist in some ; I believe it will exist 
in many, and that is enough for me. We can establish 
free trade in the United States as against the foreign 
countries — that is to say, a revenue tariff only, which is 
free trade, as distinguished from protection, if we can 



366 Orville H. Piatt 

reduce the price of labor in the United States. Other- 
wise we can not. I think it is not too much to say that 
every industry in the United States can compete with 
industries in foreign countries by reducing labor to the basis 
of labor in foreign countries. I think it would be sinful to 
do it, however. But you will say that Porto Rico is not a 
foreign country, and that the Philippines are not a foreign 
country, and we hear a great deal about the Constitution 
following the flag and the right of all persons in territory 
/ which we may acquire, to be treated precisely as we treat 

all citizens of our own States. I deny it constitutionally, 
legally, and morally. When territory comes into our 
possession and under our jurisdiction, our constitutional, 
legal, and moral obligation is to do whatever is best for the 
people of such possessions, having our own interests as well 
as their own at heart, and that only. 

Underlying all this contention about Porto Rico is 
first: the anti-expansion, and anti-imperialist conten- 
tion; and second: the contention of free trade, as against 
protection. The anti-imperialist wants to make it appear 
that it was a bad thing to take, and is a bad thing to hold, 
Porto Rico and the Philippines, because doing so we are 
under a constitutional and moral obligation to treat the 
people whom we find there just as we treat our own citizens 
without reference to their condition, capacity, or needs. 
In other words, that we must legislate for such possessions 
with regard to their ultimate admission as states, and have 
neither the power nor right to treat them otherwise. They 
know perfectly well that if they can make the laboring 
people of the United States believe that we must have 
free trade with them they will overthrow the administra- 
tion and in some way compel the surrender of the territory, 
which we have already acquired, either to the people there- 
under or to some other nation. It is for this reason that 
they roll President McKinley's words about "plain duty" 
and "free trade" as sweet morsels under their tongue. 
The free-trader also, who is always on the lookout to 



The Porto-Rican Tariff 367 

break down the protective system in the United States, 
feels that he has his innings now and that he has an op- 
portunity to distract and possibly defeat the Republican 
party and thereby shake the policy of protection to 
American industries and American labor. 

For myself, as I have said, I do not think it was ever 
necessary or wise to suggest the idea of absolute free trade 
with Porto Rico. The Secretary of War, when he recom- 
mended it, took occasion to say that he did not consider 
that we were under any constitutional or legal obligation 
to do it, but that the war with Spain having taken away 
the trade of Porto Rico and the hurricane having destroyed 
their industries, we ought to do it for the purpose of re- 
habilitating the island. 

It was scarcely true that the war had taken away their 
trade with Spain, but if true, free trade could not help 
them as to their principal product, coffee, for that was 
always free. For sugar, their next great product, ours 
has always been their particular market, and Spain one of 
their smaller markets. Tobacco has never been exported 
to Spain but has been exported to Cuba largely. It would 
have continued to be exported to Cuba, had not Mr. Porter, 
who arranged the new Cuban tariff, put a prohibitive 
duty of five dollars a pound on tobacco sent to Cuba, so 
that it was scarcely true that the war with Spain had taken 
away the trade of the islands. Nor was it true that abso- 
lute free trade was required for its recuperation. Any 
reduction of tariff duties which gave a fair advantage over 
the producers of other countries would have accomplished 
the work as certainly as absolute free trade. Reckoning the 
population of Porto Rico at a million, there are accord- 
ing to reports, 800,000 who never wear a shoe, and 50,000 
more who only wear them occasionally. I do not speak of 
this to disparage the people, but merely to indicate that the 
masses are not to be greatly benefited by free trade. The 
planters who raise the sugar and the tobacco will have a 
gold mine opened for them as it were, and a free present of 



368 Orville H. Piatt 

that mine made by the United States, and that is all there is 
of it. The twenty-five per cent, reduction of tariff rates, 
compared with the rates from other countries and to other 
countries would have been just as effective to stimulate the 
industries and help the people of Porto Rico as absolute 
free trade. But I cannot say these things very well in a 
newspaper article or, indeed, in a speech. 

The President has, I think, in the generosity born of a 
great soul, made an unfortunate recommendation which was 
seized upon by his enemies, by the anti-expansionists and 
anti-imperialists, and by free-traders to advance their 
purposes, and to elect Mr. Bryan President; but I do not 
feel that I should add anything to their weapons by say- 
ing that I thought the original recommendation of the 
President was unfortunate. The use made of it by his 
enemies made it necessary to assert the principle in legisla- 
tion that we were not bound to treat the people of Porto 
Rico and the Philippines as citizens of the United States, 
or to concede their right to ultimate statehood. The 
fifteen per cent, of duty provided for in the Porto-Rican 
bill asserts that principle, and for that reason and because 
the bill proceeds upon the idea that we are not bound to 
make a state of Porto Rico it secures my support. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

RECIPROCITY WITH CUBA 

Bulwark of the Administration — Leader of Long Struggle in 
Congress — Opposition at Home — Ratification of Treaty. 

A CRUCIAL test of Senator Piatt's patriotism and 
courage came with the acceptance of the Piatt 
Amendment and the resulting obligations which fell 
upon the United States. Even while Cuba was under 
our military control he had taken the question of its 
future commercial relations with the United States into 
serious consideration, and had come to the conclusion 
that in due season the island must be, at least nominally, 
independent, with a reciprocal trade arrangement with 
the United States, which would enable it to survive 
commercially and thus prevent its falling perforce into 
the absolute possession of the United States with the 
resulting perils of annexation and statehood. 

As early as January, 1901, Leonard Wood, governor- 
general of Cuba, had taken up the question of special 
trade arrangements and had written letters to several 
Senators urging action along that line. He asked the 
War Department for a fifty per cent, reduction in the 
export duty on Cuban tobacco and he also asked Con- 
gress that consideration be given Cuban sugar and to- 
bacco imported into the United States as in the case of 
Porto Rico. "Of course we cannot expect equal 
consideration," he pleaded, "but for Heaven's sake give 
24 369 



370 Orville H. Piatt 

us something, if only twenty-five per cent. It will do 
more than all else to clear the political situation and 
bring openly and strongly to our support, the classes 
of people always friendly to us, the commercial, the 
■planters, and agriculturists." He reported that the 
country was profoundly tranquil, that a friendly 
feeling for the United States prevailed among all the 
better classes, and the producers, but that the agitating 
group were desperate and hungry. ' ' They want to get 
the government in their hands, settle their claims, and 
after that the devil can take the hindmost." The 
restrictive conditions of the Foraker Amendment, the 
heavy export duty on tobacco, and the ruinous duty 
upon tobacco and sugar imported into the United States 
made it no easy task to instil enthusiasm into the people 
over the blessings of American control, and in the judg- 
ment of General Wood it was of vital importance to 
come to their relief. The Secretary of War approved 
the recommendation for a fifty per cent, reduction 
in the export duty on tobacco, but beyond that it was 
impossible for the executive branch of the Government 
to go. Neither could the legislative branch undertake 
any measure of relief while Cuba remained under our 
military control, and Senator Piatt thought he saw in 
this circumstance an argument which might be used to 
induce the Cuban Constitutional Convention, then in 
wrangling session, to determine before adjournment 
what the future relations between Cuba and the United 
States were to be. He wrote both to General Wood and 
to Secretary Root along this line. To General Wood 
he explained that he did not see how it was possible 
to reduce duties on Cuban sugar and tobacco until 
Cuba became an independent country and couki make 
treaties : 



Reciprocity with Cuba 371 

We cannot reduce the duties on products coming from 
one country without reducing them equally when coming 
from other countries with whom we have treaties contain- 
ing the favored nation clause. When Cuba's independence 
is recognized by the United States, we can then make a 
reciprocity treaty with her, reducing our duties on her 
products in consideration of reductions on goods which 
are imported there, and I should think that if Cubans 
understood this it would be a great inducement to them to 
determine the relations which shall exist between Cuba 
and the United States after her government is set up. It 
seems to me that this is the strongest argument which 
you have to persuade Cuba before the adjournment of her 
Constitutional Convention to determine what the relations 
are to be between the two countries. 

The Piatt Amendment was adopted by Congress a 
few weeks later and the Cuban Convention spent many 
weeks bandying words as to how it should be embodied 
in the new constitution or whether it should be embodied 
there at all. Late in April a delegation of members 
of the Convention came to Washington to confer with 
the Secretary of War. They asked for a promise that, 
if the provisions of the Piatt Amendment were accepted, 
the United States would enter into reciprocal com- 
mercial relations with Cuba. Of course such a pledge 
involving the action of Congress could not be given, 
but in so far as it was able the administration gave 
assurances which were satisfactory to the delegates. 
Concerning this period Mr. Piatt wrote over a year later 
in an article published in the North American Review, 
at a time when Congress had shown exasperating 
reluctance to take up the question of trade relations 
with Cuba: 

During all the period of our military occupation, leading 



3 72 Orville H. Piatt 

up to Cuban independence, it was understood that the 
economic relations between Cuba and the United States 
were as important as their pohtical relations. When the 
United States required of Cuba that her constitution should 
contain guarantees which should forever place her in a 
position of intimate relations to us, it was universally- 
understood that we on our part would aid her by providing 
such reciprocal commercial advantages as would enable her 
to be self-reliant and self-supporting. The Monroe Doctrine, 
which we had declared three quarters of a century ago and 
insisted upon as our right, was wrought into a compact 
between the two countries, so that thenceforth, as to Cuba, 
it was no longer to rest upon assertion alone but upon con- 
stitutional agreement. While we did not ask of Cuba in 
form that she should not enter into commercial arrange- 
ments with other countries to our disadvantage, the natural 
currents of trade made it a practical impossibility for her 
to do so, and a commission sent to us from her Constitu- 
tional Convention returned home with the just expectation 
that a compliance with our desires as to her constitutional 
guarantees would be followed by the establishment of 
mutual trade relations which would prove to be of great 
economic advantage to her. The Constitutional Conven- 
tion of Cuba asked, as a return for their acceptance of 
the provisions which we had requested, that there should 
be some promise given by the United States of the estab- 
Hshment of advantageous relations with us. In the 
nature of things such a promise was impossible, but the 
Convention was asked to act in the premises and to trust 
the United States. It did incorporate into its consti- 
tution provisions which we thought essential for us, and 
it did trust us to provide by legislation, or treaty, commer- 
cial advantages which she could not obtain from other coun- 
tries. So, up to the opening of our last Congress all was 
well. The Cuban constitution was adopted. Complete in- 
dependence awaited only the necessary successive steps for 
its establishment. Its merchants, its planters, and labor- 



Reciprocity with Cuba 373 

ers waited in trustful confidence that the United States, 
through its Congress, would provide for the industrial as 
it had already provided for the political independence of 
Cuba. Not only was this anticipated in Cuba, but here as 
well. No one could have foreseen that the United States 
would deliberately refuse to discharge its obligation. The 
United States had never been a faith-breaker; its worst 
enemy could not have predicted that it would become one. 

His own feeling about the provisions of a reciprocal 
agreement is shown in a letter which he wrote on June 
II, 1 90 1, to an American sugar-planter in Cuba who 
had been urging early action : 

Cuba wants advantages by way of a reciprocity treaty 
upon its productions, the principal of which are now 
sugar, tobacco, and fruit. I do not believe that there 
would be any serious objection to a reduction of the duties 
on Cuban sugar and tobacco ; I think there would be a pretty 
vigorous opposition in the matter of fruits. It would not 
be to the advantage of Cuba to have free trade in sugar and 
tobacco, because free trade with Cuba in these products 
would, I think, practically result in free trade with other 
countries. If it can get a fair reduction of duty on sugar 
and tobacco, it will put the island in a good condition, and 
this I think can be done if Cuba gives advantages to our 
products. In other words, that a fair reciprocity treaty 
can be negotiated and ratified in the Senate. 

Up to the time of meeting of the Fifty-seventh 
Congress in December, 1901, there was no other thought 
in the public mind than that action would be taken 
speedily for the relief of Cuba. It was known to be 
President McKinley's wish, and upon his death Presi- 
dent Roosevelt accepted as a matter of course the 
responsibility of carrying the policy into effect. In his 
first annual message Mr. Roosevelt recommended such 



3 74 Orville H. Piatt 

"substantial tariff reductions" as were necessary to 
insure industrial prosperity, and in due order a suitable 
bill for this purpose was introduced in the House and 
referred to the Ways and Means Committee which 
began a series of hearings. Then suddenly there arose a 
cloud in the sky. The beet-sugar and tobacco interests 
had been quietly at work through the summer and fall, 
and the American Protective Tariff League had busied 
itself in stirring up opposition in Congress. A group 
of insurgent Republicans in the House, who took upon 
themselves the then timely appellation of "Boxers," 
banded themselves together with the avowed purpose 
of defeating reciprocity legislation. Mr. Piatt has told 
the rest of the story in the article from which a quo- 
tation has already been made : 

We had begun in several States to produce sugar from 
beets, and for many years we had been producing in one or 
two States sugar from cane. All at once and without rea- 
son, the cry was raised that any reduction of the duty on 
sugar coming from Cuba would injure, strike down, and de- 
stroy the beet- and cane-sugar industry of the United States, 
Members and Senators from States in which these industries 
were established became first timid, then needlessly fright- 
ened, lest their assent to legislation favoring reciprocal trade 
relations with Cuba would lose them their seats. Most of 
these Senators and Representatives were Republicans. They 
were few in number compared to the whole body of Republi- 
cans, but they were numerous enough, by joining with the 
Democrats who were ready for any action which should 
divide Republican forces, to prevent wise and necessary 
legislation; and so the contest began. 

As time went on, facts were ignored, fears were magni- 
fied, prejudice invoked, until reason and cool judgment 
seemed to have entirely departed. Two assertions, neither 
of which could be sustained by proof, formed the control- 



Reciprocity with Cuba .375 

ling basis of action by the few Republicans who have been 
spoken of. First, the assertion that to reduce the tariff 
on Cuban sugar by twenty-five or even twenty per cent, 
would take away the protection enjoyed by the beet- and 
cane-sugar producers in the United States — an assertion 
which is absolutely groundless, as is shown by the fact 
that we take into our country, free of duty, 500,000 tons of 
sugar from Hawaii and Porto Rico, while maintaining 
the duty against all other countries, without in any way 
interfering with the protection of our own sugar producers. 
Second, the assertion that the so-called sugar trust would 
derive all the benefit resulting from any reduction of the 
duty on Cuban sugar — an assertion which is equally 
groundless, as is shown by the fact that Hawaiian sugar 
and Porto-Rican sugar, though duty free, have brought 
the same price in American markets as sugars from Cuba 
or Germany. The prejudice against the sugar trust was 
continually, and most successfully, appealed to. It was 
so apparent that any reduction of the duty upon Cuban 
sugar proposed would not reduce the price of home pro- 
duced sugar, that it is not probable that this argument 
alone could have resulted in defeating the suggested legis- 
lation, and so the plea that the trust, rather than the Cuban 
planter, was to be benefited was the objection most relied 
upon. It is a curious fact that while there is a popular 
belief that combinations and trusts control legislation in 
Congress, it is nevertheless true that the most effective 
means of preventing legislation is to assert that a combina- 
tion or trust desires it. Even staid legislators lose their 
heads when the statement is made that a trust is favoring 
a measure. The sugar trust is perhaps the most unpopular 
of all capitalistic combinations in the United States, and 
the apprehension excited by continual reiteration that the 
legislation in question was being supported and would 
inure to the benefit of the sugar trust was most potent. 
In the opinion of the writer it was utterly fallacious. That 
it was successful in defeating for the time being the 



376 Orville H. Piatt 

performance of our plain duty with regard to Cuba, must 
be admitted. Nowhere in the United States is pubUc senti- 
ment so hable to be misunderstood as in the city of Wash- 
ington while Congress is in session, and the fear that the 
beet-sugar industry might possibly be injured, and that the 
sugar trust might possibly reap some benefit as a result of 
the proposed legislation, was so skilfully manipulated, so 
cunningly fostered, and so persistently and vigorously 
reiterated, that the main question was practically obscured. 
Many members took counsel of their fears rather than of 
their judgment; fear developed into frenzy; suspicion 
usurped the province of fact; prejudice was more potent 
than reason; the well-considered policy of two adminis- 
trations and an overwhelming sentiment of moral obliga- 
tion were ignored. Pledges were sought and obtained, 
until it became apparent that no legislation looking to the 
relief of Cuba and the extension of our own trade was 
possible, except such as might be dictated by the opposi- 
tion for party advantage without reference to the interests 
of Cuba or ourselves. 

The President in a special message tried unsuccess- 
fully, to bring Congress back to the real question in- 
volved, of our national obligation to Cuba, and Congress 
adjourned in the early summer of 1902 with nothing 
done. 

The bill which passed the House after a memorable 
struggle was dictated by the opposition, and as the un- 
friendly sentiment in the Senate was strong and eager 
enough to prevent favorable action, it was useless to 
bring the bill out of committee. Mr. Piatt had no 
opportunity to deal directly with the question, but 
early in the struggle he seized an opportunity to issue 
a short statement to the press which left no doubt about 
where he stood : 



Reciprocity with Cuba 377 

I am a protectionist and have been so much so that 
I have been called a partisan. I am as strong a protec- 
tionist now as I ever was, but believe proper and reason- 
able concessions can be made to Cuban products in return 
for proper and reasonable tariff concessions to certain 
of our products, which would greatly benefit the trade of 
both countries, and not appreciably injure any American 
industry. 

I think the cause of protection is being wounded now 
in the house of its professed friends, and that the free- 
trader cannot injure the cause of protection as much as 
protectionists who insist upon unreasonable and unneces- 
sary customs duties. 

Towards the end of the session, replying to an attack 
on reciprocity which had been injected into a general 
debate by Senator Teller, he took advantage of another 
opportunity to declare himself in an emphatic way. 
Seventy-five per cent, of the people of the United 
States he declared were going to be " disappointed and 
chagrined and humiliated " because Congress was going 
to adjourn without taking action upon the question : 

That humiliation, that disappointment, and that chagrin 
will not down, Mr. President. The people of the United 
States see through all these things and are not going to 
be diverted in their sense of what we, in justice and self- 
interest, owe to Cuba and ourselves in this matter, by any- 
thing which may be alluded to for the purpose of obscuring 
the real issue in this matter. That sentiment will grow, 
as it ought to grow. 

I desire to say here that from the day Cuba came into 
our military occupation I have seen or thought I saw that 
there could be but one ending to this matter — either 
that we must come into such economic relations with Cuba 
as would give that repubhc created by us — in a measure 



378 Orville H. Piatt 

shut ofE from profitable communication with the rest of 
the world — such fair x^rosperity as would produce content- 
ment and happiness and affection for the United States, 
or, on the other hand, such a condition in Cuba as would 
eventually compel us to accept at the hands of the dis- 
appointed people of Cuba an offer for annexation to the 
United States. 

I regard that, Mr. President, as the greatest peril which 
to-day besets our Government. I can think of no future 
danger to be so much apprehended as that. When we 
begin to annex to our country foreign territories with 
foreign inhabitants, inhabitants alien to our race, to our 
habits, to our customs, to our traditions, and to our in- 
stitutions, with the near certainty that statehood is to 
follow, we shall have taken the first step, in my judgment, 
toward the demoralization, if not the disintegration, of 
our republican institutions. 

I think we have come to a crisis in our affairs. I think 
we have one plain duty, and that is so to treat Cuba, with 
reference to her commercial relations to the United States, 
as that we may make and keep her our friend. I stand for a 
permanent republic in Cuba. If the amendment, which I 
had the honor to present to the Army bill at the last session, 
meant anything, it meant that Cuba was not only to have 
its independence, but that the United States stood and 
would stand ready at hand to see that that independent 
and republican government was permanent in the island 
of Cuba. 

I believe that the best interests of that people and the 
best interests of the United States, the best interests of 
that Government and of our Government should lead us 
to such close reciprocal, commercial, and political relations 
as that we shall always be friends and shall not be called 
upon to absorb Cuba. 

President Roosevelt would not have been true to his 
known character if he had permitted the affair to end 



Reciprocity with Cuba 379 

here. Congress having ignored his urgent message, he 
nevertheless kept up the fight. On May 20, 1902, the 
United States forces had been withdrawn from Cuba, 
in accordance with the terms of the Piatt Amendment, 
and the administration proceeded to negotiate with the 
Government of the new republic a reciprocity treaty 
to carry our implied promises into effect. It is a curious 
commentary on the inexperience of the people with 
whom our State Department had to deal that after 
we had sent our draft of the treaty to Havana we were 
compelled also to send one of our own American 
officers, General Tasker H. Bliss, who had been in charge 
of the Cuban customs, to teach them what to do with 
it, how to propose objections and counter-proposals and 
put their case before our Government in a practical 
way. Otherwise the treaty might never have passed 
beyond its initial stages. It was signed at last at 
Havana on December nth, and duly transmitted to the 
Senate. In the meantime President Roosevelt, in 
numerous speeches during a tour through many 
States, had appealed to the American people, on every 
consideration of a generous and far-sighted public 
policy, to prove to Cuba that our friendship with her 
was of a continuing character and that we intended to 
aid her in her struggle for material prosperity. The 
President in his annual message called attention to the 
treaty which he was about to send to the Senate. He 
urged the adoption of reciprocity : 

Not only because it is eminently for our own interests 
to control the Cuban market and by every means to foster 
our supremacy in the tropical lands and waters south of 
us, but also because we, of the giant republic of the north, 
should make all our sister nations of the American continent 



38o Orville H. Piatt 

feel that whenever they will permit it we desire to show our- 
selves disinterestedly and effectively their friend. 

Even with this urging, the treaty hung on all winter. 
Finally in the special session of March, 1903, the Senate 
ratified it with an amendment declaring the approval 
of the convention by Congress to be necessary before 
it should take effect. This meant a further vexatious 
delay, but public sentiment at last had become aroused. 
The situation in Cuba during the summer became more 
and more pressing and President Roosevelt, encouraged 
to action by Senator Piatt and other friends of the new 
republic, called Congress to meet in extra session on 
November 9, 1903, to enact the legislation necessary 
to put the treaty into effect, prior to the time for mov- 
ing the sugar crop in December. 

Mr. Piatt was besieged on every hand. The tobacco 
interests of Connecticut were bitterly opposed to the 
suggested arrangement, and there were ominous hints 
as to the possibility of his re-election. But he stood 
by his guns. When assailed with letters and telegrams 
protesting against his course, he hit back unflinchingly. 
A cigar-makers' union of New Haven sent him a set 
of resolutions demanding that he oppose the Cuban 
legislation; he replied: 

I would be glad to comply with your request except 
for two reasons: 

First — I have studied this question pretty carefully 
and am convinced that the cigar-makers and manufac- 
turers of cigars will not be appreciably harmed by the 
passage of legislation to put the Cuban reciprocity treaty 
into effect, and 

Second — That it will be for the interest of the whole 
country to have such legislation passed. 

While I would like to meet the wishes of my constituents, 



Reciprocity with Cuba 381 

I feel that I must exercise my independent judgment in 
this matter. 

The editor of a New Haven newspaper who for many 
years had been his friend in season and out appealed 
to him in behalf of the sugar and tobacco interests. He 
wrote back: 

The reduction on Cuban imports will not hurt the sugar 
or tobacco industry one particle. Neither the sugar trust 
nor the tobacco trust will derive the slightest benefit from 
it. The talk about it has been the greatest exhibition of 
expansive bosh that I have ever known. It will not reduce 
the price of sugar in our market one eighth of a cent, so 
long as we maintain the duty on sugar, and if that should 
come off of course this reduction would not affect it. There 
will be no additional importation of cigars from Cuba by 
reason of the reduction — there might be a forty per cent, 
reduction and there would not. I believe that we do not 
gain a great deal from the trade of Cuba by it — in that 
respect I think it is one-sided; but if we could afford to 
spend three hundred milHon dollars to estabhsh the in- 
dependence of Cuba, I think we can afford to forego a few 
miUion dollars annually to make it more certain that that 
independence will be maintained. 

The acting president of the American Protective 
Tariff League sent a circular letter to all Republican 
Senators urging them to stand against the legislation 
urged by the President. Mr. Piatt responded: 

I believe you and the American Protective Tariff League, 
if you represent it, are all wrong about this Cuban recipro- 
city business, and that you are doing the cause of protection 
an injury which its enemies can not do it. In this I am 
certain that I speak the sentiment of the best friends of 
protection — not only here but throughout the country. I 



382 Orville H. Piatt 

think you are decidedly mistaken and are therefore mis- 
representing the sentiment of protectionists. 

Excuse me for speaking thus plainly, but I am sure 
that I am telling you of a condition which you ought to 
appreciate. 

Real public sentiment at last was effective. Congress, 
faced once more with the proposition, uncomplicated 
w4th any other question, was ready to act. The 
Reciprocity bill passed the House on November 19th, 
by a vote of 335 to 21. It was adopted by the Senate 
in the regular session a month later by a vote of 57 to 18. 
From a perusal of the proceedings of the Senate it might 
not appear that Senator Piatt had taken an especially 
active part in securing this legislation ; yet he had been 
the strongest bulwark of the administration in Congress 
from the beginning, and the weight which attached to 
his support of reciprocity was all the greater because 
of his record as an advocate of high protection. His 
advice and counsel moreover had been of the utmost 
value to the administration in its dealings with Cuba 
on account of his prestige as the author of the Piatt 
Amendment. He regarded the victory as one of the 
most gratifying incidents of his whole career. During 
all the months of discussion no more impressive words 
were written than those which were embodied in his 
noble appeal to the righteous impulse of the American 
people : 

The doings of nations are like the acts of individuals; 
motive and action make character both in men and in 
nations. It is the man of pure motive, of brave deeds and 
steady purpose who builds for himself a noble character. 
If the motive, the deed, and the purpose are but feeble 
and soon abandoned, the resultant character is ignoble. So 
with us as a people. Though our purpose was lofty, though 



Reciprocity with Cuba 383 

our triumph was striking, if we fail now in accomplishment 
we shall be either pitied or despised. Nations, like men, 
incur honorable obligations. If fulfilled to the letter, true 
growth is the result; if ignored, by men or nations, the just 
contempt of mankind is incurred. Our obligation did not 
cease when Spain was driven from Cuba, or when years of 
careful and unselfish administration resulted in the estab- 
lishment of the Cuban republic. When we undertook to 
put an end to bad government in Cuba, we became respon- 
sible for the establishment, and the maintenance as well, 
of a good government there. The world will properly 
hold us bound in all honor so to treat the republic which 
we ourselves have set up that it shall be both prosperous 
and stable. The United States, if true to its history and 
its character, must train up its child in the way it should 
go, so that when old it will not depart from it. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

AGAINST TARIFF REVISION 

Opposed to Tariflf Tinkering in 1905 — Letter to President Roose- 
velt — Saves Dingley Law. 

THAT the episode of Cuban reciprocity did not carry 
with it a modification of Senator Piatt's attitude 
toward the policy of protection soon became clear. 
The position which he maintained throughout his life 
was that indicated in a letter which he had written 
about the time of the passage of the Dingley act, in 
which he said : 

I do not recognize the distinction between high pro- 
tection and moderate protection. Protection to my mind 
means such duties on foreign products as shall fairly equal- 
ize the difference in the cost of production. 

For some reason which has never been satisfactorily 
explained along the lines of political logic, the election 
of 1904 was followed by a demand in influential Repub- 
lican circles for a revision of the Dingley Tariff law which 
had then been in operation eight years, and the life 
of which had been coincident with the period of greatest 
prosperity in the history of the United States. There 
had been no party pledges that a revision would be 
made — indeed, the tariff question had hardly figured 
in the campaign one way or the other, the occa- 
sional allusions to it being by way of endorsement of 
the Dingley law, with startling comparisons between 

384 



Against Tariff Revision 385 

the business distress of the Cleveland administration 
and the financial rejoicing of the succeeding years. 
But no sooner was the election over, with its unprece- 
dented Republican majority, than there arose a cry for 
a special session of Congress to be called immediately 
after March 4th, to take up the tariff question and 
remedy the defects of the Dingley law. It is true that 
nobody could point out just where those defects were, 
or what particular schedule of the tariff needed revision, 
.but the feeling undoubtedly prevailed, and many people 
had been convinced by a certain element of the press, 
that something, vaguely, must be done. 

President Roosevelt, continued in the White House 
by an unexampled expression of the popular will, was 
impressed by the newspaper discussion and was in- 
fluenced also by certain members of his Cabinet who 
were incHned to revision. He was disposed to take up 
the question in his annual message, and was prepared 
to issue a call for a special session of Congress after the 
fourth of March, but before acting he sought the ad- 
vice of some of the "elder statesmen." Senator Piatt 
was invited to the White House. He went there with a 
friend, and the President told him what he had in mind. 
He listened patiently till the President had concluded 
and then, leaving his chair and pacing the floor, he gave 
the reasons why in his judgment the tariff should not be 
disturbed at that time. As to the impression made 
upon the mind of the Executive, we have only the in- 
ferences to be drawn from a letter which, on his return 
to Connecticut, Mr. Piatt wrote to an associate on the 
Finance Committee: 

I saw the President when I was in Washington, and he 
is going to simply say in his message that he will call the 

25 



386 Orville H. Piatt 

attention of Congress to the tariff question later. His 
mind, I judge, is pretty fully made up to the policy of 
having a joint commission, to be composed of members of 
the Committee on Ways and Means and Finance Committee, 
appointed to consider the subject, with a view to reporting 
to an extra session to be called perhaps in September. I 
did not talk with him very much on the subject. What 
I did say was that I could not see any necessity for an extra 
session, and that it seemed to me that the tariff is well 
enough as it is. . . . He admitted that he did not think 
there was any necessity for it except a political necessity,, 
and that he believed that this sentiment is much stronger 
than I suppose it is ; that if we do not meet it, it will grow 
stronger and stronger until finally it will get the upper 
hand. That is about what I came away on. . . . You 
know as well as I, that a joint commission composed as 
suggested, would be entirely valueless, so far as getting our 
ideas accepted is concerned, if they differed from the ideas 
of the members of the Ways and Means Committee, We 
would be placed in a very humiliating position, and it is 
far better, in my judgment, to let the Ways and Means 
Committee formulate its own bill, whatever it may be, 
and then let us consider it when it comes over to us, as 
we have always considered such questions. I do not be- 
lieve Payne or the members of the Ways and Means Com- 
mittee of the House would consent to anything else, but I 
do not know. If they did, I know it would mean that we 
should sit and struggle all through the summer months, 
with no agreement except such as might be reached by our 
falling in with their wishes, and when it came over to the 
Senate, if objected to, as it would surely be by a large 
number of our colleagues, we would simply be charged 
with having sacrificed their interests. I do not think it 
will work. 

He did not content himself with an oral argument 
to persuade the Executive of the inadvisability of 



Against Tariff Revision 387 

reopening the tariff question. It was a subject upon 
which he held profound convictions, and immediately 
upon his arrival home he prepared a letter to the Presi- 
dent reinforcing what he had already said. The force 
and lucidity of his statement do not suffer from the lapse 
of time, or in consideration of events four years later, 
when Congress was called together to do that which 
Roosevelt's better second thought condemned: 

Washington, Connecticut, November 21, 1904. 
Dear Mr. President: 

Since seeing you on Friday, I have been thinking about 
this matter of tariff re-adjustment and I want to put the 
result of my thought on paper. 

First, — I am firmly of the opinion that a general tariff 
revision is unnecessary and would prove disastrous to the 
business interests of the country. No Republican that 
I know of has advocated a general revision. It could 
not be undertaken and consummated without throwing 
the whole business and financial relations of the country 
into a state of uncertainty, and if it were understood that 
such a thing were contemplated, the uncertainty would 
begin from the present moment, continue all through the 
consideration of the subject, and long after its final con- 
clusion. To attempt to make a new Tariff bill throughout, 
would, in my judgment, be a piece of egregious folly. 

Second, — I do not admit from the standpoint of the 
business interests of the country and its prosperity, the 
necessity for making any changes or amendments in rates. 
The tariff is well enough as it is ; it is largely to be credited 
with our wonderful prosperity and present impregnable 
business position, but if it be true that there is a sentiment 
for changes in tariff rates which must be placated, then, 
I insist that such changes should be few and moderate. I 
do not agree that there is any general sentiment such as I 
have named. There is a free-trade sentiment, stimulated 



388 Orville H. Piatt 

by Democratic leaders and newspapers, and there have 
always been protectionists who, as soon as a protective 
tariff has redeemed the country and put it in a prosperous 
condition, have, for some reason, been ready to fall in 
with the idea that duties ought to be reduced. I think the 
extent of this sentiment among Republicans has been and 
is, vastly overestimated. Personally, I would sooner under- 
take to show why the tariff should be let alone, than to 
fall into the spirit which favors any change. But, if we 
must take it up, what shall be done, and how shall it be 

done? 

Third, — I think that any changes or amendments which 
it may be supposed we must, for pohtical reasons, make, can 
be better made in the natural and ordinary way than by 
the appointment of any commission, or the calling of any 
extra session. By the natural and ordinary way, I mean 
that the Committee on Ways and Means should propose by 
way of amendment to the existing law, the changes which 
it is supposed we must, for pohtical reasons, make. If the 
members of that Committee desired informal consultations 
with members of the Finance Committee of the Senate, there 
would be no difficulty in having them. Once made, these 
changes could be passed through the House at the short 
or a regular long session without exhaustive debate, and 
could be considered in the Senate, and if agreed to, passed 
there without lengthy interference with the regular busi- 
ness of the session — then the whole matter would be over. 
I think perhaps there is a general consensus of opinion 
that the duties on the coarser forms of iron and steel 
might be reduced without harm, but the moment you step 
outside of that, the different sections of the country will 
come into direct conflict. This picayune matter of free 
hides would be a storm centre in which the East and West, 
or rather Boston and the West, would be fighting a bitter 
battle — so with lumber, so with wood pulp, so with every 
other article with which I have heard changes suggested — 
still, if the battle must be fought, it, in my opinion, can be 



Against Tariff Revision 389 

fought in the regular way I have suggested, with less of 
regret when it is over, than by any commission or extra 
session method. 

Fourth, — A commission composed of members of the 
House and Senate Committees to sit through the summer, 
would practically be obliged to hear and consider every 
proposed or contemplated change in the tariff, and that 
would involve the whole. I believe that a joint commis- 
sion, such as is suggested, would simply develop and em- 
phasize the antagonism which is supposed to exist between 
the two Houses. The House claims, and it has the right, to 
originate such measures. It seeks every opportunity to 
declare the fact that it does not propose to be dictated 
to or advised by the Senate in any matter which is thus 
within its own exclusive jurisdiction, and if such a com- 
mission met, the House members would inevitably assume 
the right to determine what should be done, and from the 
first the Senate members of that commission would either 
be placed in a position of acquiescence simply, or charged 
with interference in a matter in which, primarily, they 
had no right to be heard. Mr. Aldrich and Mr. Payne, the 
chairmen, can sit down and talk about such matters in 
their own rooms at the hotel without developing antagon- 
ism, but the moment such a commission undertook to deal 
with any particular item of the tariff, and the House mem- 
bers proposed certain action which the Senate members 
might say they thought inadvisable, the old antagonism, 
which you understand, I think, would be developed. But, 
admit, if you please, that they would work together in har- 
mony and peace, which I do not believe, then, as I have 
said, every appHcation for any change in any item of the 
tariff, and that would embrace the whole Hst, made to the 
commission, would have to be considered, or it would have 
to decide at once that it would only deal with a few of the 
items of the different schedules. It would be exceed- 
ingly difficult to mark out the line of limitation. Little 
by little, the list to be considered would be enlarged, until 



390 Orville H. Piatt 

finally, it would come to the consideration of an entire change 
of the Tariff law — a new bill, which would be named after 
the Chairman of the House Committee, and called the 
"Payne bill." I do not believe that you know exactly 
what that would mean, as one who has been through it 
several times does, but we all agree that it would mean 
a general upset of the business of the country. 

Fifth, — As I have said, an extra session seems to me 
allowable only upon the theory that such changes as are 
necessary to be made (for political effect merely — mind 
you) cannot be made at a regular session or in the regular 
way. If the idea of a joint commission should prevail, 
and the result of the work of that commission should, as I 
believe it surely would, be a recommendation for a new 
Tariff bill, then I can see that an extra session might be 
desirable in order to get it out of the way as quickly as 
possible, but this above all things else, I deprecate. In- 
deed, the only argument in favor of an extra session is, 
that there is going to be such a vital change in the Tariff 
law that we must have time to get over the consequences 
of it before the next election. In other words, the calHng 
of an extra session presupposes that there will be an entire 
revision of the tariff. It seems to me that what changes 
are to be made, and as I have already said, they should 
be few and moderate, should be proposed in the regular 
way. that I have suggested, and disposed of in the regular 
way. We do not want any spectacular readjustment of the 
tariff. We cannot afford to have twelve months of uncer- 
tain, dull times, with laborers out of employment, and 
discontent generated. I think it would be better to take 
the stand at once that the present Tariff law in most of its 
features is wise and satisfactory; that the Committee on 
Ways and Means of the House will carefully consider in 
what respects it needs amendment and will present its con- 
clusions to the House in the form of bills to effect that 
purpose, to be considered either at this present session, 
if they can be formulated in time (and if work is begun 



Against Tariff Revision 391 

immediately I think they can be) or at the December 

session. It grows on me more and more that it would be 

disastrous to throw this entire country into the vortex of 

agitation over a general revision of the Tariff law. This is 

the way it looks to me. 

Very truly yours, 

O. H. Platt. 

With his friends in Connecticut he also corresponded 
along similar lines. One of them wrote him sapiently: 
" There should be a careful study of our tariff law, and 
such revision as changed conditions warrant should be 
promptly made." To this suggestion he replied: 

Do you really appreciate what is meant by a revision 
of the tariff? What do you think ought to be changed in 
the tariff? I think it is a pretty good tariff as it is and 
that this talk about tariff revision is rather sentimental 
than otherwise. ... I confess that I do not know in what 
respect the tariff ought to be changed, and I have given the 
matter a good deal of study. I am quite sure that the 
idea of tariff revision would inaugurate contention and 
sectional differences which would go a great deal further 
toward breaking up Republican harmony and interfering 
with RepubHcan success, than letting things alone would. 
If you know of anything on which the tariff ought to be 
changed, or any one else does, such change can be made in 
the natural ordinary way, by amendment, but I think that 
a spectacular revision of the tariff would be most disastrous. 
I do not mean by this that if any one can show me an item 
which ought to be reduced or which ought to be increased, 
I am not entirely willing to do what I can in that direction, 
but I see no necessity for a complete revision of the 
tariff, and I do not beHeve that the people who are talking 
about it can show such a necessity. 

To others he explained that while it might be deemed 
wise, if not necessary, to make some amendments to 



392 Orville H. Piatt 

the Tariff law, personally, and from a business and 
economic standpoint, he thought it was entirely un- 
necessary. He recognized that there was undoubtedly 
a sentiment in the country that there should be some 
changes. The duty on many articles was greater than 
was necessary for the protection of the industry. It 
was hard to make people believe that when this was 
an acknowledged fact, it did not give opportunity for 
manufacturers and especially trusts, to make exorbi- 
tant and unconscionable profits. Personally he did 
not believe this to be true. He wrote : 

I do not believe that an unnecessarily high duty exerts 
any influence whatever upon prices. If there is a demand 
for the goods or articles, the price will be good. If the 
demand exceeds the supply, the price will be abnormal. 
If the demand falls off and the supply exceeds the demand, 
the price will be normal, or indeed, abnormally low, but 
it is the most difficult thing in the world to make people 
understand this, and even men who have called themselves 
protectionists are carried away with the idea that high 
rates of duty are stimulating to the trusts, and the trusts 
are oppressing the people. 

But he hit the real secret of the clamor for revision 
when he said: 

The Republican newspaper demand for it, I think, comes 
largely from a desire to have the duty taken off from wood 
pulp and printing paper. It is the old story — a man 
wants his article free and the duty on every one else's. 
They cannot see that protection is a system which, if 
it is to be appHed, should be applied so as to protect every 
industry. ' 

The " dumping " question gave him some concern as 
a political consideration. He acknowledged that the 



Against Tariff Revision 393 

strongest argument he had heard was that manufac- 
turers were selling goods to foreigners at a less price 
than they were charging in the home market. But he 
explained : 

No revision of the tariff which still left a protective mar- 
gin could prevent that, and I am by no means certain that 
it is not a good thing to have it done. We want a foreign 
market for our goods, and the foreign market cannot be 
established except by sales at cost or under cost. A 
prudent manufacturer, seeking to establish a foreign mar- 
ket, might well make concessions for the purpose of intro- 
ducing his goods which would leave him no profit. Now, 
I take it, no one proposes to make such a tariff that a man 
cannot have some profit on what he manufactures, so that 
I do not see that any radical reduction in the tariff duties, 
there still being a protective margin, would in any way 
cure or lessen the evil, if it is one, of selling goods abroad 
at cheaper rates than we sell them in the home market, 
and when you come to think of it, what a foolish thing it 
would be for Germany or England, or any of our competi- 
tors, to pass a law providing that their manufacturers should 
not sell their goods in America cheaper than in Germany 
or England. 

With the Boston cry for reciprocity with Canada he 
had no patience. That was a proposition which in 
existing circumstances, he regarded as utterly im- 
practicable. To Wharton Barker of Philadelphia, he 
wrote on December 5, 1904: 

I do not think that outside of Boston there is in New 
England any considerable sentiment one way or the other 
with reference to what is called "Canadian reciprocity." 
I certainly have never heard it mentioned in Connecticut 
as a matter especially desirable. I am a Httle surprised 
at the Boston craze. They seem to take it for granted there 



394 Orville H. Piatt 

that Canadian reciprocity is something which the United 
States can promote and accomphsh all by itself, and that 
any kind of reciprocal trade arrangement would be to 
the advantage of Boston. My understanding, though of 
course I may be mistaken, is that Canada has no desire to 
make any reciprocal arrangement with us — and it takes 
two to make a bargain. So much for the present talk about 
Canadian reciprocity. Until it be ascertained that Canada 
is ready to treat with us on that subject, it is simply an 
academic proposition, and I do not think that it will be 
developed. What I have said with regard to Canadian 
reciprocity, so-called, appHes with equal force to the ques- 
tion of a more complete commercial union. The answer 
to it is that Canada does not take kindly to any such proposi- 
tion, and it is useless for the United States to attempt to 
force it upon Canada. When Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the 
people who with him control the political destinies of 
Canada are ready to take up either partial or complete 
reciprocal trade arrangements, it may be worth while to 
discuss what would be of advantage to the United States 
— a pretty broad subject, by the way — but so long as they 
are hostile to anything of the sort, I do not think that we 
will gain anything by agitating it. 

So he held his course without deviation, until as he 
had predicted, the cry for tariff revision was lost in the 
louder cry for regulation of railroad rates. He had 
attained his purpose, and it was due to his influence 
more than to any other, that the Dingley law was not 
wantonly supplanted at that time. 



CHAPTER XXX 

ANTIQUATED SENATE WAYS 

The Rules of the Senate — Advocates Open Executive Sessions — 
Speech of April 13, 1886 — Proposes Limitation of Debate. 

\/[ R. PLATT was as little of an inconoclast as any 
A V 1 rnan who ever sat in the United States Senate. 
His respect for custom and tradition was ingrained. 
He was instinctively conservative, yet it was his strik- 
ing characteristic that as he advanced in years he 
progressed in intellectual flexibility, adapting himself 
with marked facility to the enlarged requirements of 
an expanding people. His was always an inquiring 
mind; with all his natural respect for authority, he 
refused to subscribe to its demands until convinced 
of valid reasons. No precedent could claim his alle- 
giance without due presentation of credentials. His 
first consideration always was for the practical, and 
theories were useless which could not be enforced. 
The standing rules of the Senate he did not regard 
as in themselves a §acred writing, but merely as a 
means adapted to an end, and when they failed to 
fill the measure of what he thought to be the Senate's 
need, he did not hesitate to urge a change. He had 
not been in the Senate long before the grotesque in- 
congruity of the executive session fetich dawned upon 
him. Even in those days the executive session was 
a byword and reproach, the ban of secrecy yielding 

395 



/ 



396 Orville H. Piatt 

to the first gentle touch of the reporter's wand, yet 
in many years there had not been a serious suggestion 
in the Senate that the useless rule be changed. In 

/ 1 84 1, William Allen of Ohio introduced a resolution 
for open sessions, which was promptly laid on the 
table; he renewed it subsequently three times without 

. success. In 1853 Salmon P. Chase submitted a reso- 
lution abolishing secret sessions, and Charles Sumner 
urged its adoption. In the following session the resolu- 
tion was renewed and laid on the table. That was all. 
There was therefore little encouragement for persis- 
tence in this line of endeavor, yet Mr. Piatt in January, 

J 1 886, gave the Senate another opportunity to mend 
its ways. It was in the first year of President Cleve- 
land's administration, and the notorious character of 
some of his nominations, subject to confirmation by the 
Senate behind closed doors, gave pertinency to Mr. 

/ Piatt's proposal. On January 29, 1886, he submitted 
a resolution which was promptly reported adversely 
by the Committee on Rules, and which, as afterwards 
modified by him, read as follows : 

Resolved, That executive nominations shall hereafter be 
considered and acted upon in open session except when 
otherwise ordered by vote of the Senate. And so 'much 
of Section 2, Rule xxxvi., and Section 2, Rule xxxviii. 
of the standing rules of the Senate as conflicts with or is 
inconsistent with the above is to the extent of such in- 
consistency rescinded. 

Upon this resolution on April 13th, he delivered a 

^ carefully prepared speech, although the hopelessness 

of action was apparent. This speech revealed a great 

deal of research into the records of the Senate from 

the beginning of the Government, and demonstrated 



Antiquated Senate Ways 397 

that the rule of secrecy could not claim the sanction 
of the founders of the Republic, that the departure from 
early methods had been in the line of greater strict- 
ness and in the line of inflicting penalties for disclosure. 
He admitted that whatever secrecy was implied from 
closed doors existed at the beginning of the Govern- 
ment, but he denied that any more existed than was 
thus implied: 

That any greater secrecy existed in relation to the con- 
sideration of executive business than existed with the 
consideration of legislative business while the Senate sat 
with closed doors, I deny. It was not until 1800, eleven 
years after the Senate commenced its sessions and six 
years after the doors were opened for legislative business, 
that any rule of secrecy was applied to any kind of business 
transacted in executive session. So whatever secrecy the 
fathers observed for six years after the Senate was opened 
as to legislative business was the same secrecy with regard 
to executive business that they had at first adopted with 
regard to legislative business and no more. 

He showed by references to history, that even in 
the Continental^ Congress which sat with closed doors, 
and in the legislative sessions of the Senate, which 
for the first five years were held with closed doors, 
no rigid secrecy was maintained. Having demolished 
the historical argument he made an earnest plea for 
publicity. Secrecy he declared to be a relic of mon- 
archical power and privilege, a lineal descendant of 
the privy council. With open sessions he asserted 
bad men would not be presented to the Senate for 
discussion : 

The incompetent will not be presented here for us to 
discuss as they are now presented, if it be understood that 
their characters and quaUfications are open to public 



^ 



398 Orville H. Piatt 

discussion, and are to receive public consideration. The 
whole business of appointing men to office will change. 
We shall have fewer recommendations of bad men, fewer 
nominations of bad men, fewer confirmations of bad men, 
if publicity can attend the whole business of office-seeking 
and office-getting from the White House to the Senate. 

Moreover, he declared as the result of some years' 
experience : 

I affirm now that I never have heard a word said in 
executive session which ought to have been said there, or 
which any person thought ought to have been said there, 
which might not just as well and just as appropriately have 
been said in open session in relation to the confirmation 
of nominations. 

Public sentiment, he asserted, demanded the adop- 
tion of the rule. Out of nearly 14,000 newspapers, 
10,000 had declared their belief that the measure should 
be adopted. "The country newspapers, which repre- 
sent the real sentiment of the country, which go where 
the minister and the schoolmaster do not enter, and 
where the voice of the Senate does not otherwise go" 
had declared in favor of the measure : 

Whence arises this demand? It is not idle curiosity. 
It is not that a few reporters may look in on these proceed- 
ings and send the news to the journals which they represent. 
Oh, no; that is not it. It is the desire of the people for a 
better administration of the government. It is a desire 
of the people that the standard of official life and char- 
acter shall be elevated; and they know the only way to do 
it is by having the qualifications of men discussed openly 
in the Senate chamber. 

He had a more convincing argument : 

But, Mr. President, there is no secrecy. We are hugging 
an old custom for its name rather than for its actual 



Antiquated Senate Ways 399 

results. We are pinning the Senate to the skirts of an 
ancient tradition which, as to any useful result, is sterile 
and barren. There is no secrecy possible. There never 
has been any secrecy possible in any matter about which 
the public desired information that took place in executive 
session. I do not say how much or how little, or whether 
any at all, of the reports which we see from day to day in 
the newspapers published after each executive session is 
true, but I think I am justified, without revealing any 
secrets of executive session, without doing what the Senator 
from Vermont intimated in his colloquy the other day 
with the Senator from Kentucky was done — violating a / 
senatorial oath and becoming guilty of senatorial perjury — 
I believe I may say that the secrets of this body are to a 
greater or less degree exposed and disclosed. Mixed they 
may be with untruth, mixed they may be with the fertile 
imagination of the newspaper reporter, nevertheless no 
Senator will deny me in saying that more or less of what 
occurs in executive session is disclosed. It is disclosed 
either by Senators or by the officers of the Senate, and when 
I say that I do not mean to cast the slightest suspicion upon 
the officers of the Senate. I do not want to be in a body 
where I am subjected to the suspicion of dishonorable dis- 
closure. We are a class here, as lawyers, as clergymen, as 
bank presidents, and as business men are a class; and when 
one does a thing that is discreditable we all suffer. . . . 

What a farce it is, Mr. President. The whole community, 
the world, are laughing at us that we pretend to have 
secret sessions. We ourselves would be infinitely better 
off if every word that is said here were known to the re- 
motest portion of the globe than with the pretended publi- 
cations of what we do and say mixed up with the 
imagination of reporters and the untruthfulness which 
accompanies the reports. 

It was not to be expected that the Senate would 
change its immemorial practice, and no action was 



400 Orville H. Piatt 

ever taken on the resolution after its rejection by 
the Committee on Rules. Public interest died away 
and has never been revived in anything like the same 
degree. There have been spasmodic attempts on the 
part of the Senate to enforce the rule of secrecy by 
conducting farcical investigations into the manner 
in which the proceedings of executive sessions have 
been divulged, but public sentiment apparently has 
settled into a contented acceptance of the inevitable, 
satisfied in the knowledge that the proceedings of so- 
called secret sessions are, in effect, as widely published 
as any other proceedings of the Senate. 

Mr. Piatt did not disturb the serenity of the Senate 

again in regard to its rules until the time arrived when, 

s/ in his judgment, as in the judgment of many other 

Senators, the practice of interminable debate had 

passed all reasonable bounds. 

In the first session of the Fifty-first Congress, the 

Elections bill, sometimes called the Force bill, was pre- 

/ vented from coming to a vote by the dilatory tactics 

of the Democratic minority under the lead of Arthur 

P.Gorman. The McKinley Tariff bill narrowly escaped 

^ a like fate. While the minority were thus engaged in 
pressing to the limit of endurance their privilege of 
unlimited debate, the leaders of the majority were 
groping for a remedy. Some form of closure seemed 

V indispensable, but it was not easy to devise a practical 
amendment to the rules. Mr. Hoar submitted an 
amendment providing for a vote upon questions before 

"'' the Senate under certain conditions, within a reason- 
able time. Mr. Piatt considered the introduction of 
an amendment to the same end, and so did others. 
All propositions were referred to the Committee on 
Rules, but nothing was done about them during the 



Antiquated Senate Ways 401 

first session of the Congress, although there was more 
or less debate. The Tariff bill was enacted; the Elec- 
tions bill went over with the understanding that it 
was to be taken up during the short session. The 
Democratic victory at the fall elections, insuring a Demo- 
cratic House after March 4th, did not incline the Demo- 
crats of the Senate to forego during the short session, 
any of the advantages they held under the rules, and 
it was evident that the Elections bill, which had the 
right of way, could not become a law before the end 
of the Congress, in spite of the persistency with which 
it was pressed by Mr. Hoar, the Chairman of the Com- 
mittee having it in charge. On December 29th, accord- 
ingly, Mr. Aldrich, Chairman of the Committee on 
Rules, and even then beginning to receive recognition 
as the leader of the Senate, submitted an amendment, 
based on the amendment drawn by Mr. Hoar, and 
operative by its terms only "during the remainder 
of this session. " It was debated religiously for several 
days and then, since it evidently stood as little chance 
of reaching a vote as the Elections bill itself, it quietly 
disappeared among the mists of "unfinished business. " 
The next heard in the Senate of the proposal to 
limit debate was during the long summer filibuster of 
1893, when the endeavors of the free-silver Senators, 
to prevent a vote on the Sherman law repeal, sorely 
tried the patience of the Senate and the people. As 
soon as the Democratic intention became manifest 
Republican leaders began to figure on some device 
to thwart it, and again the practicability of closure 
entered into their consultations. Mr. Piatt especially 
was in earnest. When Democratic Senators refrained 
from voting, for the obvious purpose of breaking a 
quorum, he lectured them roundly for their neglect 
26 



/ 



402 Orville H. Piatt 

of duty, and their disregard for the obligations of 
their office. On October 13th, after the country had 
been treated to the unseemly spectacle for weeks he 
broke out hotly against Senator Teller who had frankly 
asserted his privilege to decline to answer on a roll- 
call whenever the minority thought it necessary to 
resort to obstructive tactics. He declared: 

I cannot assent to the very remarkable position which 
the Senator from Colorado has taken, which, if I understand 
it, is in plain words this: That if he does not like proposed 
legislation, he will not only violate his constitutional duty, 
but, as it seems to me, his constitutional oath. 

The rules of the Senate require that every Senator shall 
vote unless excused, and they require that absent Senators 
shall be brought here, that their attendance shall be com- 
pelled, and, when compelled, the rules require that they 
shall vote, unless excused. 

I supposed when I swore to support the Constitution 
and to discharge the duties of a Senator, that a constitutional 
duty rested upon me to observe the rules of the Senate. 

The Constitution provides for the rules of the Senate, 
and yet we hear, and hear I think for the first time in the 
history of the Senate, the deliberate statement made by 
a Senator that he will not observe the rules of the Senate, 
i / because he is in a minority and does not want the majority 
legislation to pass. It is one of the things which is fast 
bringing the Senate into disgrace in the United States. . . . 

I do not see how any Senator can sit in his seat when the 
roll is called and not answer to his name. I remember 
when I first came to the Senate, in the session of 1879, in 
the heat of party strife one evening, in common with other 
y Senators, I did refuse to answer to my name when the roll 
was called, but, upon reflection, I made up my mind that 
I never should again, and I think I have never under 
any state of excitement done it since that time. If I 



Antiquated Senate Ways 403 

have, it has been in my judgment wrong and it cannot be 
defended. 

Prior to this outburst he had introduced an amend- 
ment providing for closure, which, for palpable reasons, 
was never brought to a vote.^ 

In addressing the Senate in its support two days 
after presenting it, he declared : 

We as a Senate are fast losing the respect of the people 
of the United States. We are fast being considered a body 
that exists for the purpose of retarding and obstructing 
legislation. We are being compared in the minds of the 
people of this country to the House of Lords in England, 
and the reason for it is that under our rules it is impossible, 
or nearly impossible, to obtain action when there is any 
considerable opposition to a bill here. 

I think, Mr. President, that when the necessity and the 
propriety of a change of the rules so as to reasonably 
facilitate the transaction of business is thus brought to 
our attention, it is the best time to enter upon that work. 
I know it will be said that in the present condition of affairs 
in the Senate we can not adopt such a rule, but I believe 

> The amendment, presented on September 19th, was as follows: 
Resolved, That Rule IX of the Senate be amended by adding the 
following section: 

Section 2. Whenever any bill is pending before the Senate as 
unfinished business, the presiding officer shall, upon the written 
request of a majority of the Senators, fix a day and hour, and notify 
the Senate thereof, when general debate shall cease thereon, which 
time shall be not less than five days from the submission of such 
request; and he shall also fix a subsequent day and hour, and notify 
the Senate thereof, when the vote shall be taken on the bill or 
resolution, and any amendment thereto, without further debate ; 
the time for taking the vote to be not more than two days later 
than the time when general debate is to cease ; and in the inter\\al 
between the closing of general debate and the taking of the vote, 
no Senator shall speak more than five minutes, nor more than once, 
upon the same proposition. 



v/ 



/ 



404 Orville H. Piatt 

that we can adopt it by a vote of the Senate just as easily 
as we can pass the repeal bill, and just as quickly. 

He believed that a large majority of the Republicans 
in the Senate would favor the adoption of the rule. 
The consideration of the resolution, if delayed fac- 
tiously, would demonstrate more clearly than could 
be demonstrated in the consideration of the repeal 
bill that the opposition was engaged in obstructing 
and filibustering: 

Mr. President, the trouble is that the rules of the Senate 

permit unlimited debate. It is not the courtesy of the 

/ Senate, as is generally supposed, that is invoked; it is the 

^ right under the rules for any member of the Senate to 

speak when he pleases, as long as he pleases, and as often 

as he pleases, upon any pending proposition. . . . 

It comes, then, to this: That there are just two ways 
under our rules by which a vote can be obtained. One is 
by getting unanimous consent — the consent of each Senator 
j to take the vote at a certain time. It has been demon- 
strated, if it is not perfectly patent to every Senator in 
the chamber, that that method of obtaining a vote can 
not be made available upon the present measure. . . . 

Next comes what is sometimes known as the process 
of " sitting it out," that is for the friends of a bill to remain 
(/ in continuous session until the opponents of it are so physi- 
cally exhausted that they can not struggle any longer. 
■ That may or may not result in a vote either upon this 
measure or upon any great measure upon which a deter- 
mined contest is made. ... 

Such a practice is almost inhuman. It smacks of the 
methods of obtaining a verdict by a jury where the jury 
is locked up continuously until they give a verdict. The 
proposition is to force the minority to surrender upon a 
test of physical endurance. The result usually is that the 
majority surrenders upon the test of physical endurance. 



Antiquated Senate Ways 405 

Mr. President, that being the case, why may we not 
just as well try to change our rules? Is not that the best 
way to accomplish the purpose of those senators, myself 
included, who desire a vote upon this subject? 

As soon as the repeal bill had been enacted, the 
question of closure drifted along without serious con- '^ 
sideration for several years. Mr. Piatt and others 
gave it some thought, but that he was not disposed 
wantonly to disarrange the orderly proceedings of 
the Senate, is shown by his mild reference to closure 
in a speech which he delivered in response to the toast , 
"The United States Senate" at the Bridgeport Centen- 
nial banquet in 1900. After dwelling briefly on the 
greatness of the United States, and the multiplicity 
of interests involved in legislation, he said: 



V 



The Senate of such a nation must, as a matter of course, 
be a body wherein discussion and deliberation are not 
unduly limited. I know that the people at times become 
impatient because the Senate acts so slowly, and that it 
'seems as if a minority was able to prevent action at all. 
Yet we must choose between ill-considered and well- V 
considered action. In the Senate of a great country such 
as I have described, great and momentous questions 
constantly arise. To be rightly decided they must be 
intelligently decided. It is no slight tax upon a Senator's 
industry and intellectual capacity, to arrive at a thorough 
understanding of these great questions. If the people 
require that action shall be based on a comprehensive ^ 
knowledge of the subject under consideration, it is evident 
that each question should at least be fairly discussed. 
The right of unlimited debate may be abused, and yet, with 
all its abuses, it is a safer rule to allow it than to stifle debate - 
in order to secure immediate action. Minorities have rights 
as well as majorities, and it is as essential to the welfare 
of the pubhc that their rights should be fairly recognized 



4o6 Orville H. Piatt 

as it is that the will of the majority should govern. I 

would be, and I am, in favor of a reasonable limitation of 

/ debate in the Senate, but I am not in favor of putting into 

/ the hands of the majority the power to cut off fair debate 

by the minority. This question of the limitation of debate 

in the Senate is not only a dehcate but most important 

one. If any rule can be devised by which, when a measure 

/ has been fairly and sufficiently debated, it can be brought 

»/ to a vote, a great reform would be accomplished. But the 
difficulty of prescribing a rule for the limitation of debate 
which shall apply to all questions aHke, is very great. I 

/ sincerely hope, however, that some plan may be devised 
/ by which, without injustice to the minority, the majority 
may be able to secure action more promptly than at present. 
Bills quite frequently come from the House of Represen- 
tatives intended to put into law certain principles which 
commend themselves to the judgment of the people, the 
specific provisions of which might work great injury. Wise 
and intelligent legislation must foresee and forecast as 
/ well the effect of particular provisions as the adoption of 
important principles. Let me illustrate by reference to 
measures which are likely to come before the next session 
of the Senate. The session is limited to three months, 
expiring by limitation of law on the fourth of March next. 
Among other matters which will be pressed for considera- 
tion are the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, modifying the terms 

^ of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty with England, the com- 
mercial treaties, commonly called reciprocity treaties, 
which affect most of the great industries of the country; 
and, in general legislation, the Nicaragua Canal bill, the 
Shipping bill ; bills for the re-organization of the army, for 
the increase of the navy, for the reduction of the internal- 
revenue war taxes; possibly, legislation for the PhiHppines 
and to determine our relations with Cuba; bills and a 
constitutional amendment relating to trusts, relating to 
the hours of labor and convict- made goods; regulating the 
granting of injunctions in controversies between employers 



Antiquated Senate Ways 407 

and employed; the apportionment of the next House of 
Representatives, fifteen general appropriation bills, each 
of which raises questions of vast moment, and which in 
their aggregate provide for the expenditure of at least 
five hundred milHons of dollars. Now, if the Senate is to 
deal intelligently with these questions, each Senator must 
have a thorough and intelligent comprehension of them in % .• 
all their bearings, and this can come only from intense 
study, unremitting application, and the exercise of wise 
judgment. Legislation is no child's play. Mistakes in- 
volve the happiness and welfare of the people. 

When he recited the catalogue of measures pressing 
upon the coming short session of the Senate for con- 
sideration, he was not endowed with the gift of pro- 
phecy, for he did not foresee how much parliamentary- 
skill it would take to enact the most important legisla- 
tion of all — the measure for the adjustment of the 
relations between the United States and the republic 
of Cuba, a measure which he had to impose as a rider 
upon the Army Appropriation bill in order to insure 
consideration without debate. 

The privilege of unlimited oratory would have put 
it in the power of a single Senator in the closing days 
of the session to prevent action on the Piatt Amend- 
ment if proposed as an independent bill and compel 
the President to call an extra session for its consid- 
eration; while other important measures, less urgently 
demanded, failed for a like reason to receive any consid- 
eration whatever. This trying experience, which kept 
the leaders of the Senate on edge for weeks, impelled 
them to seek an avenue of relief. 

On March 5, 1901, the first business day of the 
special session of the Senate, called at the beginning 
of the second McKinley administration, Mr. Piatt 



4o8 Orville H. Piatt 

gave notice of an amendment which he proposed to 
offer to the rules— the same in terms as that originally 
drawn by Mr. Hoar in the Fifty-first Congress and sub- 
mitted for the Rules Committee by Mr. Aldrich.i 

It was not acted on during the brief opening session. 
Before Congress met in regular session the following 
December, the country had been stirred by the assas- 

1 Resolved, That for the remainder of this session the rules of 
the Senate be amended by adding thereto the following: When any 
bill, resolution, or other question shall have been under considera- 
tion for a reasonable time, it shall be in order for any Senator to 
demand that debate thereon be closed. On such demand no 
debate shall be in order, and pending such demand no other motion 
except one motion to adjourn shall be made. If such demand be 
seconded by a majority of the Senators present, the question shall 
forthwith be taken thereon without debate. If the Senate shall 
decide to close debate on any bill, resolution, or other question, 
the measure shall take precedence of all other business whatever, 
and the question shall be put upon the amendments, if any, then 
pending, and upon the measure in its successive stages, according 
to the rules of the Senate, but without further debate except 
that every Senator who may desire shall be permitted to speak 
upon the measure, including all amendments, not more than once, 
and not exceeding thirty minutes. 

After the Senate shall have decided to close debate as herein 
provided, no motion shall be in order but a motion to adjourn or 
to take a recess, when such motions shall be seconded by a ma- 
jority of the Senate. When either of said motions shall have been 
lost or shall have failed of a second, it shall not be in order to renew 
the same until one Senator shall have spoken upon the pending 
measure, or one vote upon the same shall have intervened. 

Pending proceedings under the foregoing rule, no proceeding 
in respect of a quorum shall be in order until it shall have appeared 
on a division or on the taking of the yeas and nays that a quorum 
is not present and voting. 

Pending proceedings under the foregoing rule, all questions of 
order, whether upon appeal or otherwise, shall be decided without 
debate, and no obstructive or dilatory motion or proceedings of 
any kind shall be in order. 

For the foregoing stated purposes the following rules, namely, 
VII., VIII., IX., X., XII., XIX., XXII., xxvii., XXVIII., XXXV., and 
XL., are modified. 



Antiquated Senate Ways 409 

sination of President McKinley, a new force was in 
control at the White House, and the Senate found itself 
engaged in more absorbing questions than amendments 
to the rules. Legislative developments, however, were 
soon to stimulate anew Mr. Piatt's interest in the 
subject. 

In the short session of Congress which met in Decem- 
ber, 1902, obstruction for the sake of obstruction or 
revenge became a recognized feature of parliamentary 
procedure in the Senate. It was used from the begin- 
ning to prevent the Statehood bill from coming to a 
vote. Later the friends of the Statehood bill combined 
w4th others in retaliation to stifle w4th debate the 
much needed Aldrich Financial bill and the Philippine 
Tariff bill, while Tillman of South Carolina held Congress 
by the throat and forced amendments on two important 
appropriation bills in the last hours of the session. 
Morgan of Alabama deliberately talked over the fourth 
of March the treaty with Colombia providing for the 
cession of rights on the Isthmus, and compelled a 
special session of the Senate for the ratification of the 
Colombian and the Cuban reciprocity treaties. The 
country was aroused by all this. Mr. Cannon as Chair- 
man of the Appropriations Committee focussed attention 
on the rules of the Senate by denouncing in the House 
the practice which in effect permitted legislation only 
by unanimous consent. Even so cautious a Senator / 
as Allison of Iowa was stung into offering a resolution 
directing the Rules Committee to consider whether any 
changes should be made imposing a limit on debate. 
Mr. Hoar and Mr. Piatt proposed amendments pro- 
viding for closure under certain conditions. Nothing 
was done beyond referring these proposals to the 
Committee, but after the special session came to an 



4IO Orville H. Piatt 

end Mr. Piatt began at once to gather material with 
a view to pressing his amendment at the regular session 
the following winter. He did not think it possible 
to get the previous question in its naked form or any 
such drastic rules as obtained in the House, which to 
his mind resulted in the passage of ill-considered 
measures : 

What ought to be done in the Senate, in my judgment, 
is to allow reasonable opportunity for debate, and then 
compel a vote, but what is reasonable at one time in the 
session, would be entirely unreasonable at another time. 
For instance — two or three weeks' debate in the early part 
of a session, upon an important measure, would be none 
too much, perhaps, while two days' debate at the end of 
a session would enable opponents of a measure to kill 
it, because they could talk the time out. The problem, 
and it is not of easy solution, is to get a rule which will be 
fair at different periods of the session. I think my propo- 
sition, that two fifths of the Senators may fix the time when 
a vote shall be taken, and limit the length of speeches to 
be made in the interim, comes as near to it as anything I 
have heard suggested, but perhaps that is not perfect. 
At any rate, I shall try to push the matter at the commence- 
ment of the next session.^ 

He had in mind especially Cuban reciprocity, but 
an amendment to the rules proved to be unnecessary 
for the immediate purpose. Public sentiment was 
slowly at work during the summer. President Roose- 
velt called Congress in special session in November 
for the express purpose of enacting legislation to 
carry the Cuban treaty into effect. The bill was duly 
passed and limitation of debate, no longer demanded 
for a particular object of legislation, was lost to sight 
once more. 

1 Letter to Jacob L. Greene, March 28, 1903. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

DIGNITY OF THE SENATE 

"Legislation by Unanimous Consent" — The Senate not Decadent — 

Not a Rich Man's Club — Opposes Seating of Quay — 

The Tillman-McLaurin Episode. 

ON every fit occasion the Connecticut Senator used 
plain speech concerning the curious growth 
known as the "Rules of the Senate." The habit of 
transacting business by unanimous consent was espe- 
cially irritating and he was for revising the rules so as 
to do away with it altogether. In the spring of 1904 
there was a bill before the Senate to allow Alaska to 
be represented by a delegate in Congress. Mr. Piatt 
was opposed to it for the same reason that he would 
have opposed a delegate from the Philippines — because 
he feared it would be the entering wedge for statehood, 
and he was radically hostile to any proposition giv- 
ing statehood to non-contiguous territory. Those in 
charge of the bill secured unanimous consent one day, 
fixing the time for its consideration. When the time 
arrived he was not ready to speak because he did not 
have at hand certain documents to which he wished to 
refer, but those who had secured unanimous consent 
insisted on taking the bill up at once. The Senator's 
wrath was roused. He spoke bluntly and frankly: 

It seems to me that the Senate of the United States 
ought to provide by its rules the method in which it will 

411 



412 Orville H. Piatt 

do business, and that the practice which has sprung up 
here of trying to do things by unanimous consent is in no 
way a substitute for rules which ought to be provided for 
the orderly transaction of the business of the Senate. 

There never is a unanimous consent given here which 
does not bind some Senator in some way in which the Senator 
did not expect to be bound and did not suppose he was 
bound. I have seen unanimous consent asked for and 
given when there were not ten Senators in the Senate; and 
because asked for and given under these circumstances, 
there was supposed to be some sort of an obligation upon 
the Senators not present, and who would not, perhaps, have 
given their assent if they had been present, that that 
unanimous consent should be kept to the letter, and the 
fraction of the letter, that "the pound of flesh" should be 
taken, and that nothing should by any means interfere 
with the carrying out of such a unanimous-consent agree- 
ment. I do not intend hereafter to give my assent to 
fixing a time for action upon any bill. . . . The courtesy 
of the Senate is a mysterious, a fearful, and a wonderful 
thing. It is to be exercised on occasions, and on other 
occasions it is not to be exercised. I think that the ex- 
perience of this day most certainly points to the necessity 
of having some rule in the Senate by which the Senate can 
do business in an orderly way and the rights of no Senator 
and the understandings of no Senator be invaded or in- 
fringed upon. I do not think that a previous question 
pure and simple ought to be adopted in this Senate; but 
I do think there ought to be some rule whereby debate can 
be limited to a reasonable time, and a time fixed for the 
taking of a vote otherwise than by unanimous consent, 
obtained in a thin Senate, when perhaps not more than five 
or six Senators are here. 

Yet the slight respect in which he held some of its 
traditions was quite in keeping with his scrupulous 
regard for the Senate's essential dignities. There were 



Dignity of the Senate 413 

no questions to which he gave more conscientious 
thought than those concerning its integrity, and no 
criticism to which he was more keenly sensitive. He 
was proud of the body to which he belonged. He 
believed that the framers of the Constitution, under 
the lead of Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth 
of Connecticut, builded wisely when by providing for 
equal representation of States, large and small, for 
long terms of service, and for election by the Legislatures 
instead of by popular vote, they put the members of 
one branch of Congress beyond the reach of temporary 
clamor. He was convinced that in the equal inde- 
pendence of House and Senate rested the hope of safe 
and permanent legislation. He was impatient with 
those who bewailed the decadence of the Senate. In 
his view^ the average of ability among Senators was 
much higher in the later days than in the earlier 
time, when men of larger fame commanded national 
applause. With the multiplicity of interests attending 
the growth of the country, the questions to be considered 
in Congress had become more complex and exacting, 
carried more far-reaching consequences, and called 
for more accurate and comprehensive knowledge than 
ever before. "A Senator who comes now to this 
chamber" he said in eulogizing Mr. George of IMissis- 
sippi, "meets with an average ability with which 
the Senators of older times did not have to contend. 
No man can be pre-eminently conspicuous here to- 
day. There is too much of force, of learning, of strength, 
of ability here for any one man to stand head and 
shoulders above his associates." He used to say that 
in the Senate of his day there were more men in pro- 
portion to the membership who were well equipped 
to deal with the questions of the present than there 



414 Orville H. Piatt 

were in the days of Webster and his contemporaries 
equipped to deal with the questions of the past, and 
he had known Senators who would not lose in compari- 
son with those who were called the giants of former 
days. At a time when the outcry against the Senate 
as a "millionaires' club" was unusually strident, he 
rose to the defence of his associates. "It is not a 
body of rich men" he said, "whatever the popular 
belief in this respect may be": 

In a membership of ninety there may be ten who would 
be called millionaires, and a few, perhaps four or five, who 
are the possessors of several millions. Of the remaining 
eighty members, about one half may be considered in 
comfortable circumstances, or what would be called in any 
community fairly well off, and the other half would be 
ranked as poor men in any community. I think in no 
body of men to be found anywhere in the world is a man 
more justly and critically measured for what he really is 
than in the United States Senate, and in no body of men 
is influence more justly proportioned to ability and wise 
judgment than in the Senate. A Senator's wealth may 
count in social life, but it cuts little figure in the Senate. 
To be influential in the councils of the Senate one must 
have convinced his colleagues that he has intellect, sound 
judgment, and absolute integrity. Whoever possesses 
these makes the influence of his State felt in the national 
Senate. He may possess money, but without the qualities 
that I have mentioned he is little more than a cipher there. 
The Senator poorest in worldly goods may weigh most in 
the deliberations of that body, and the man richest in 
worldly possessions may weigh the least. ^ 

Such exhibitions of bad blood as occasionally marred 
the proceedings of the Senate filled him with resent- 

• Bridgeport Centennial banquet, 1900. 



Dignity of the Senate 415 

ment. When in February, 1902, Tillman and AlcLaurin 
of South Carolina came to blows on the floor, he voted 
for the resolutions of censure which were adopted, 
but explained that he did so reluctantly because 
except by the passage of the resolutions he saw no 
way in which the Senate could inflict any punishment 
upon those who were guilty of disorder. He had a 
personal liking for Tillman, but he did not regard the 
penalty as in any way commensurate with the offence. 
A few days later he introduced a resolution declaring 
it to be in the power of the Senate to punish a member 
for disorderly behavior by debarring him from partici- 
pating in its proceedings, and still later, writing to a 
friend he voiced his indignation : 

We have not got through with the Tillman question yet. 
After we had apologized to him, as you saw in reading 
the proceedings, I introduced a resolution to the effect 
that the Senate had power, in punishing for disorderly be- 
havior, to disbar a Senator from participation in the pro- 
ceedings of the Senate. That raised the question of our 
right, and that has gone to the Committee on Privileges 
and Elections and they will make a report upon it, I think. 
Their claim that we cannot do it because it deprives the 
State of equal representation in the Senate is merest bosh, 
and yet it seems to trouble a good many people. If 
Tillman does not behave himself now I think that we will 
expel him, though we have not got two thirds vote our- 
selves, and some of our RepubKcans are tender-footed. He 
knows better. His repeated performances are deliberate, 
and not due to a lack of proper understanding of the pro- 
prieties and privileges of the Senate. What he does, he 
does with malice prepense and aforethought. I am hot 
about it. ^ 

• Letter to John H. Flagg, March 5, 1002. 



4i6 Orville H. Piatt 

Whenever a question arose as to the right of a Senator 
to his seat, he was exacting in his demand that the 
precedents of the Senate should be strictly foUowed 
and that the requirements of the Constitution should 
meet with rigid compliance. In such a case he never 
permitted personal or partisan considerations to sway 
his judgment. During the '90's there was an epidemic 
of deadlocks in State Legislatures resulting in a failure 
to elect a Senator and the subsequent appointment by 
the Governor of some one to fill the vacancy. In every 
instance Mr. Piatt held that the one thus appointed 
was not entitled to a seat; that a vacancy could not 
constitutionally be filled by appointment unless it 
had first happened while the Legislature was not in 
session. Thus in the case of Corbett appointed by 
the Governor of Oregon he voted against seating, al- 
though a sound-money Republican vote would have 
proved handy in the Senate at the time. Against his 
personal and party inclinations he took a similar 
position when the case of Matthew Stanley Quay came 
before the Senate in the springof 1900. Quay had 
been for twelve years a Senator of influence, personally 
well liked by political friends and opponents. When 
the time for his third election came around, the Penn- 
sylvania Legislature was in deadlock, and after its 
adjournment the Governor appointed him. Some of 
the strongest Republican lawyers in the Senate favored 
giving him the seat, and many Democrats would gladly 
have had him succeed. Mr. Piatt was no less friendly 
than others, but he felt compelled to take the lead in 
the debate against giving Quay the seat. He cited 
a formidable array of precedents and authorities to 
sustain his contention. He especially resented an 
intimation that the majority against Corbett had 



Dignity of the Senate 417 

been due to other than constitutional considera- 
tions : 

I do not believe that sixteen Senators in this body voted 
to reject Mr. Corbett because he was a gold standard Re- 
publican. The charge is one which reflects greater dis- 
honor upon the Senate of the United States than any charge 
that has ever been made against it. 

The question he declared was whether anything could 
ever be considered settled in the Senate. Were the 
uniform precedents and unbroken decisions of over 
one hundred years to be observed, or were those pre- 
cedents to be disregarded and those decisions to be 
overruled upon the ground of personal or political 
friendship : 

There are no enemies of Mr. Quay here. In the considera- 
tion of this case there should be no friends — that is to say, 
no one on account of his friendship should vote for Mr. 
Qijay — no one should vote for him on that ground alone. 
Let it once go out to the people of this country that a 
Senator is to be seated because a majority of the Senate 
hke him and because he is endeared to them by long 
association, because he is a good man or a brave man; and 
that one who is not hked and is not endeared to them by 
association, who cannot be said to be a great man or a 
brave man, is not to be seated, the Senate from that hour 
will sink into deserved disrepute. . . . The present 
claimant of this seat in the Senate, who thought less than 
two years ago that Mr. Corbett should be rejected, now 
comes with a case admittedly weaker and asks a decision 
in his favor. If the Senate should accede to his request, 
the people will have a right to ask and wih not be slow to 
ask upon what ground the reversal of the Senate's de- 
cision rests. Thereafter, Mr. President, whoever shall 
desire to aim a shaft of satire against the inconstancy. 
27 



4i8 Orville H. Piatt 

the favoritism, the partiality of the Senate, will find one 
ready pointed for his bow.^ 

By the narrowest possible margin the Senate refused 
to seat Quay. Piatt's vote would have turned the 
scale. 

^Congressional Record, ist Session, Fifty-sixth Congress, p. 4550. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

LABOR AND CAPITAL 

An Unbiassed Judge — Opposed to Radical Measures — A Friend of 
the Workingman — Defeats Anti-Injunction and Eight-Hour 
Bills — Supports President Roosevelt in Coal Strike and 
Northern Securities Case — Address before Workingmen's Club 
at Hartford — Opposition to Anti-Option Bill — Speech of 
January 17-19, 1893. 

DORN and brought up on a farm — the most natural 
L-' and most wholesome of workshops — dependent 
upon his own efforts for his education and his training 
in the law, a successful lawyer in causes affecting 
business enterprise, yet never gifted with the genius 
for pecuniary gain, Orville Piatt came into public life 
endowed with an equipment for weighing fairly ques- 
tions concerning capital and labor, and as a Senator 
he gave to their study the ripest judgment of a balanced 
mind. 

In the practice of his profession in Meriden before 
entering the Senate, he had attained an annual income 
of probably $25,000, but that was only for a little 
time, and he had met with financial reverses, so that 
throughout his life he felt the need of comforts which 
money might have bought. He cared nothing for 
money in itself, yet there never was a time during all 
his years in Washington when he was free from irrita- 
ting financial perplexities; when he did not have to 

"squirrel" the checks he received from magazines 

419 



420 Orville H. Piatt 

for an occasional article in order to insure a few days* 
summer outing in the Adirondacks; when he did not 
feel compelled to decline courtesies which he knew 
he could not afford to return. Throughout his public 
life he was entirely dependent on his salary, and if he 
had retired from the Senate at any time after he entered 
it, he would have been obliged to turn his hand at once 
to the task of earning his daily bread. When he died 
he left as a legacy little except his good name. Yet, 
lacking for himself the money sense, he was a most 
conscientious conservator of the trust of others; he 
respected thrift and recognized the ability and energy 
which developed industries and utilized capital to 
the community's general good. 

From the beginning of his professional career, Mr. 
Piatt was in close touch with business interests. He 
believed in the integrity of the ordinary man of affairs 
and he deprecated irresponsible attacks upon those 
who had accumulated wealth. At the same time he 
was progressive. He sympathized with those who 
strove for an adjustment of the relations between 
labor and capital, and he recognized with a clearness 
of vision, which increased as he grew older, that there 
was no more dangerous enemy of the public than the 
unreasoning man of wealth, who refused to tolerate 
even mild discussion of the duty of concentrated 
capital to the community, and who cried out against 
all agitation of sociological questions as anarchistic 
and revolutionary. Thus holding an even scale, had 
he lived a little longer, he would have been a powerful 
influence for good in stirring times, the unrest of which 
is still upon us. 

So far as his own political fortunes were concerned, 
he apparently was indifferent alike to organized labor 



Labor and Capital 421 

and to organized capital. He went straight his own 
way, uninfluenced by the threats or the blandishments 
of either. The great struggle of the future he believed 
was to be between the forces of socialism and the 
forces of established order. To this belief he often 
gave utterance, and, looking far ahead, he so shaped 
his course that to the limit of his power and opportunity 
he might contribute to the wisest issue of the combat : 

Men are declaiming and agitating to-day not for the 
equal rights of man, but for the equal possessions of man; 
that destroys equal rights! The trouble is not so much 
that there are millionaires in the country, as it is that there 
are so many people who want to be millionaires, and do 
not care how they get to be so.^ 

His great and genuine interest in the American 
workingman and his regard for the nobility and dignity 
of labor were manifest in his public utterances and 
not only in his speech but in his conduct, for no man 
ever lived who came nearer to meeting his fellow crea- 
tures on a footing of equality. When the bill creating 
the' Department of Agriculture with a Cabinet officer 
at its head was before the Senate in 1888, he objected 
to it on the ground that it was framed to benefit 
peculiarly "the agriculturists who are at the top, 
not the agriculturists who are at the bottom." He 
pleaded for recognition of the farm laborer. Mr. 
Morgan of Alabama had remarked patronizingly: 

There are in the Senate chamber, I dare say. Senators 
who have come up from what are called the inferior or 
humble classes of society, whose fathers and mothers, 
with themselves toiled in the field for the bread of Ufa 
until perhaps fifteen or twenty years of age. 

> Address on Lincoln, Republican Club, Feb. 12, 1897. 



422 Orville H. Piatt 

This hit the Connecticut farmer's son closely and 
called from him the cordial response : 

I am one of the men who commenced this life in what 
the Senator from Alabama is pleased to call the inferior 
or humbler class of society. I worked with my father 
in the field for the bread of life until I was more than fifteen 
years of age. Some of the time I worked for other farmers 
for wages, and I wish right here to enter a protest against 
that life being called inferior or humbler in any sense than 
Hfe in any other occupation, profession, or calling. . . . 
If I were to go back to my native town and attempt to 
tell its citizens that when I left the farm and its hard labor 
I went up into a higher station or a more honorable po- 
sition I should be laughed at, and justly laughed at. There 
is no higher or more honorable or more dignified station 
than that of the man who cultivates the farm. I do not 
feel that my position as Senator is more worthy of respect 
and honor than was my position on the farm. 

In the course of this speech he paid tribute to the 
men who toil : 

Right at the foundation of Republican government lies 
the principle that the man who works shall be honored — 
that his position shall be one of dignity, that no man 
shall have a right to despise him in this free land ; and not 
only that, but that he shall have such wages as will enable 
him to elevate both himself and his family and those de- 
pendent upon him in the scale of moral, social, and financial 
well-being. 

The great underlying force of America is the workingm.an ; 
the man who labors and toils, the man who receives wages, 
and just as he is elevated, just as a condition of things 
exists which lifts him up and makes him more and more 
a man, enables him to ascend in the scale of manhood, a 
Republic grows strong; and just in proportion as any policy 



Labor and Capital 423 

exists which beats him down and degrades him in the scale 
of manhood the Republic grows weak. 

With us, this is a government of the people. It is more 
than that, it is emphatically a government of the common 
people. It is a government of the men who work. More 
than that, it is a government of the men who work for wages. 

They are the majority of its voters. They set, or ought 
to set the policy of the government in finance, in education, 
in civil rights, in all that goes to make a nation great 
and honorable, prosperous and beneficent. The common 
people for once in the world here on these shores, away from 
the tyrants and kings, were given the reins of government. 
Whatever we have of government we are indebted to them 
for. Whatever we are to have in the continuance of free 
government we shall be indebted to them for. . . . 

Let no one delude himself with the idea that capital is 
going to govern this country. There is a great ground-swell 
of humanity in the world. You can see it abroad in foreign 
lands, in monarchical governments; but more here in the 
Hght of our free institutions this great ground-swell means 
that humanity is taking an upward step, and that the man 
who works is to rule, and he is to rule wisely. 

You need have no fear of him. You need have no fear 
that he is going to tear down and destroy free institutions. 
He is going to conserve and preserve them, because he 
knows that they are the outcome of the principle which 
makes him what he is and what he wants to be. 

With his understanding of the real needs of honest 
labor he was intolerant of those who fanned the fires 
ot class hate. His wrath leaped out against Grover 
Cleveland when, pending his second election and 
inauguration, that leader seemed bent on rousing the 
feeling of the laboring classes against protected in- 
dustries. "He has been sowing the wind ever since 
election," he wrote to John Flagg. "The whirlwind 



424 Orville H. Piatt 

harvest is getting ready for the reaping." Bryan in 
1896 and 1900 was unthinkable. A few days before 
the election in 1896 he wrote: 

I have in recent speeches tried to impress on my au- 
diences that every one of the objects mentioned in the 
preamble of the Constitution is directly assailed by 
this communistic, Bryanistic outfit, and that two of the 
three great branches into which the power of our govern- 
ment is divided, the executive and the judicial, are directly 
and intentionally attacked. I think that in the minds of 
the people all their issues are in these last days being over- 
shadowed by the danger of rebellion which besets us, and 
that thousands of men who are somewhat in favor of free 
silver will vote against Bryan because they dare not commit 
the destinies of this Government to Altgeld, Tillman, and 
Bryan, who represent in personal characteristics and in 
their developing careers, the three leading spirits of the 
French Revolution, Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. The 
people have seen it this last week. It has not been so 
before, and I think this foreseen danger will settle the 
matter against Bryan. 

He regarded the result in each of the Bryan cam- 
paigns as an escape from a real peril. After the elec- 
tion in 1900, he wrote to A. H. Byington, once his 
secretary and then Consul at Naples: 

That man Bryan is a mystery. He seems to be able to 
hypnotize his followers and the question of whether he 
could win or not depended, apparently, on whether he 
could excite discontent enough among people who ought to 
be reasonably content, to give him a majority. He did 
make a very bold and bad appeal. It was the poor against 
the rich, or the less fortunate against the more fortunate, 
and I think no one was entirely sure that he was not making 
inroads on us by that appeal. I think he overdid it. We 
have so many people in the United States now who have 



Labor and Capital 425 

a little something of their own, or hope to have a little 
something in the future, that the conservative clement is 
much larger than fellows like Bryan think, and they rather 
resent the idea of being told that they are poor, and that 
it is to their interest as poor people to pull everything down 
over their heads. - — 

Sympathizing with the workingman, yet appreciat- 
ing the responsibilities of the employer of labor, he 
was throughout his career a resolute opponent of 
legislation calculated to create a breach between the 
two, or inconsistent with his own ideas of what was 
seemly under the Constitution and the traditions of 
the law. As a member of the Judiciary Committee 
he was an obstacle in the way of the Anti-Injunction 
bill. He and Senator Spooner came to a trial of issues 
with the Chairman of the Committee in 1902 which 
resulted in Spooner' s indignant withdrawal from the 
Committee, leaving the burden of opposition upon 
Piatt alone. For many years he, more than any other, 
prevented the passage of the Eight-Hour bill. His 
course with regard to the Eight-Hour bill was typical 
of his method of dealing with all measures which he 
looked upon as vicious. Although hard pressed by 
labor organizations in his own State upon whose good 
will his own political future might have hung, he never 
faltered in the fight, and he was brutally frank in his 
response to labor organizations in their importunate 
demands. "I think that the Federation of Labor is, 
and has been, impressed with the idea that it can neither 
frighten nor cajole me," he wrote in 1903. "I really 
think its members respect me none the less for that." 
The Eight-Hour bill was urged with unusual insistence 
during the session of Congress immediately preceding 
the Presidential election of 1904; was passed by the 



426 Orville H. Piatt 

House, and was reported favorably by the Senate Com- 
mittee. Senator Piatt not only opposed the measure 
in the Senate, interposing his objections at every step, 
while other Republican leaders were favoring its pas- 
sage, but he helped to organize and stimulate opposi- 
tion elsewhere. 

While the bill ostensibly applied only to government 
operatives, Mr. Piatt recognized that in actual enforce- 
ment it would apply to manufacturers generally. 
He pointed this out in a personal letter which he wrote 
on October 21, 1904, to Secretary Metcalf, whose 
assistants had been investigating for the Department 
of Commerce and Labor: 

We have a great many manufacturing establishments in 
Connecticut carrying on a general manufacturing business 
of course, selling their goods in the open market ; but almost 
all of them accept some work from the Government — that 
is to say, they agree with the Government, or with a con- 
tractor or a sub-contractor, to make certain articles which 
the Government needs, usually different in some respects 
from, although related to, their general line of goods. This 
business, while it is but a small and apparently unimportant 
part of the whole, does, nevertheless, often enable them 
to keep their factories going and their laborers employed, 
when otherwise they would be obliged to dismiss their 
employees, or run on shorter time. It is utterly impossible, 
from the nature of the case, that the work upon such goods 
as are for the use of the Government, should be limited 
to eight hours unless the entire business of the establish- 
ment is to be put upon the same plan. I need not elaborate 
to show that this is so, and the avowed object of the people 
who are pushing the Eight-Hour bill is to compel every 
establishment that does any government work to put its 
entire factory upon an eight-hour basis. ... I do not 
suppose that you know the extent to which this controversy 



Labor and Capital 427 

has been upon my shoulders for the past six years in 
Congress. 

His replies to labor organizations were unmistakable. 
The Typographical Union of Waterbury sent him a 
petition urging him to support the bill. He replied 
by return mail : 

I have not thought that the bill is in the interest of the 
workingman. So far as government establishments are 
concerned, I would regard it favorably, but if applied to 
all private establishments doing some government work, 
either directly for the Government or indirectly for con- 
tractors, it seems to me it would only produce confusion 
in such places, forcing them either to put the establishment 
as a whole on the eight-hour principle, or cease their work 
for the Government. The latter I think is what most 
establishments would do. This would simply make so 
much less work for the laborer — perhaps necessitating at 
times, the shutting down of the shop, when otherwise it 
might be continued running by reason of the government 
work. I think the bill is not fully understood by the 
workingman. 

To the Central Labor Union of Waterbury, which 
adopted resolutions and suggestions as to his action 
upon the Eight-Hour and Anti-Injunction bills, he 
replied : 

I beHeve that neither of these bills ought to be passed, 
and that neither is in the interest of the workingman. 

To a Hartford manufacturer he wrote : 

When I say to you that a year or more ago the State 
Federation of Labor, holding its annual meeting in Meriden, 
devoted one afternoon to denunciation of me, saying that 
I was the one man who had prevented this legislation, 
and calling upon all members of the labor societies m 



428 Orville H. Piatt 

Connecticut to see that representatives were elected who 
would not return me to the Senate of the United States, 
you will perhaps understand my position pretty fully. 

Writing to M. Hartley of New York, he said: 

I suppose it is not egotistic to say that the bill would 
have gone through the Senate except for my sole opposition 
to it, an opposition by which I have incurred the hostility 
of all the labor organizations in the United States. 

He did not confine his plain speaking to the represen- 
tatives of labor-unions. He was continually telling 
needed truths to those who were seeking legislative 
recognition for vested interests. Only a few weeks 
before his death, in a letter to a New York capitalist 
he said: 

I do not suppose the Standard Oil people have any idea 
of the sentiment here against anything that is thought 
to be of benefit to them. There seems to be a perfect 
craze now regarding the operations of those concerns 
called "trusts," particularly the prominent ones. 

When Wall Street leaders were trying to defeat the 
appropriation for carrying into effect the Income Tax 
law in 1895, he explained to them carefully that it 
could not be done, and when one of them questioned 
his judgment he replied testily: 

I don't understand the apparently mysterious belief 
existing among New York corporations that there are votes 
to be had for the defeat of the appropriation for income 
tax purposes. People who usually give me credit for know- 
ing how the Senate stands on a given question say: "Our 
advices are positive that votes enough can be had to beat 
it." "If the New England Senators vote against it, it 
is surely beaten." When I ask them from what sources 
they get their information, they look very wise and say. 



Labor and Capital 429 

"We can't tell you that, but our infonnation is reliable." 
Now my conclusion is this : That pervaded with the idiotic 
idea that things can be done in the Senate with money, 
they have raised a fund and put it in someone's hands who 
is not only bleeding but fooling them. I know that C — 
said that he and another man could have $400,000 with 
which to beat it, but he had concluded that it could n't 
be done and was going to tell the parties so. I shall find 
out just who and what the men interested are relying on. 
They are being fooled, as men always are who get such no- 
tions about legislation. There is a decided majority in 
the Senate for that appropriation and against a proposition 
to repeal the income tax. Such propositions will get no 
Democratic vote but Hill's — there are 43 votes. Every 
Populist unless it is Stewart — there are three more, 46; and 
there are five Repubhcan votes that will not under any 
circumstances vote against the appropriation. There are 
51 soHd votes. Any one who says differently does n't know 
what he is talking about. I hate to see people so willing 
to be fooled and bled, and another thing that annoys me 
is that people will believe that the Senate follows the lead 
of Quay and Hill. How men who can't see further than 
this ever make money, I can't see. It must be luck — it 
is not judgment. You wanted my opinion and I am bound 
to say what I think. 

He endorsed with little qualification the two most 
telling blows which President Roosevelt struck during 
his first administration for the man in the street. 
To a citizen of New Haven he wrote, while the nomi- 
nation of the President was still pending, in the fall 
of 1903 : 

Why are business men not earnest in their support 
of Mr. Roosevelt? What has he done to forfeit it? I hear 
two reasons mentioned to account for it. One is his efforts 
to have the coal strike settled. But I think now that the 



430 Orville H. Piatt 

matter has gone by, business men forget what was apparent 
to all careful and thoughtful observers at the time, namely: 
that if the strike had continued for a fortnight longer, 
there was serious danger of riot, bloodshed, and indeed, 
possible revolution. Hungry men are dangerous; men who 
are unable to find anything with which to warm their 
houses are dangerous. I regard that as the most critical 
period in our history since the war, and I believe that if 
President Roosevelt had not exerted himself to bring that 
strike to a conclusion, there would have developed a con- 
dition of affairs that no man could have foreseen the end 
of. I think it is not only to his great credit, but to the 
interests of the whole country that he did bring about a 
settlement of that strike. 

The second thing that I hear of which troubles business 
men, is that he directed a suit to be brought against the North- 
em Securities Company for a violation of the law on our 
statute books — well, he is sworn to execute the laws! If 
the attorney-general believed, as I am told he advised the 
President he did believe, that this Company had violated 
the law, — what is called the "Sherman Anti-Trust law," 
— what would you have had the President do, — refuse to 
take action? I do not know what the final action of the 
courts will be, but I do know that the Court of Appeals, 
composed of able judges, decided that there was a violation 
of that law. 

I want to say one thing more — the bringing of that suit 
probably checked the promotion and floating of over- 
capitalized combinations in the United States, and in that 
respect it was a blessing. The matter of manufacturing 
corporations with hundreds of millions of dollars capital, 
and the unloading of over-capitalized stock upon innocent 
purchasers, had grown to an extent which was really alarm- 
ing, and which, if continued, would have brought down the 
whole financial fabric upon the heads of business men. 

In May, 1904, he was invited to address the Working- 



Labor and Capital 431 

men's Club at Hartford, and in the few words he spoke 
there he outHned his general attitude toward organized 
labor, in more definite terms than on any other public 
occasion. He said: 

Some things appear to be pretty well agreed upon: 
First, the right of both labor and capital to organize 
for a good purpose; second, the right on the part of labor 
to strike, to obtain redress of real grievances, and for a 
possible betterment of conditions; third, the right of an 
employer to reduce the wages of his employees, or to dis- 
charge them when the necessities of business require it; 
fourth, that a man has a right to work without belonging 
to an organization, and fifth, that belonging to a labor 
organization furnishes no just ground for the refusal of 
employment by the employer. . . . There must be in 
every dispute a fair ground of adjustment. Possibly one 
of the parties to a dispute may be absolutely right, and 
then it has to be settled, if settled properly, by the abso- 
lute surrender of the other, but generally speaking, the 
fair settlement of a dispute involves concessions by each 
of the contending parties. I think this is true in 90 per cent, 
of all industrial or trade disputes, and it would be infinitely 
better in each case if the just basis of settlement could be 
ascertained before the dispute reached its critical and 
injurious stage. While the technical right to strike or to 
lock out is admitted, yet both strikes and lockouts result in 
loss and harm and injury to both parties in interest, and 
not only to the parties themselves, but to the public at 
large. . , . What the world wants is peace, and this is 
true in the industrial world as in the world at large. 

The great unsettled labor problem then, is how are the 
controversies between labor and capital to be avoided; 
how are they to be settled if they occur? . . . 

I never hear that phrase, so almost universally used, 
" the conflict between capital and labor, " without a shudder. 
It jars upon my sense of truth. It is hke its twin phrase, 



432 Orville H. Piatt 

"the conflict between science and religion" — misleading. 
There is no real conflict or antagonism between capital 
and labor. Capital and labor are interdependent; their 
interests are mutual, — one cannot prosper without the 
other. With a fair understanding of their mutual relations 
each must prosper. If men could only see this, the world 
would get along; business would prosper, workingmen 
would be happier and more independent. Above all, it 
seems to me that it becomes necessary to recognize the 
changed relations which exist between employer and em- 
ployed. When I was a boy there was scarcely a manu- 
facturing establishment in the State of Connecticut which 
employed as many as fifty workmen; they were as a rule, 
small establishments, conducted by some man who had 
been an employee himself, and who, by thrift, economy, 
and fair dealing, had acquired a little capital with which 
he established a business, carried on under his personal 
supervision. He employed his workmen personally; he 
knew them intimately; he associated with them in their 
homes, and thus the employer and employed each recog- 
nized their mutual dependence and their mutual interests. 
But that time is all gone by. . . . Applied science, as it 
is sometimes called, has absolutely changed all the con- 
ditions of life and business. This is the age of organiza- 
tion — an organization possible only as the result of the 
application of these forces of nature to the methods of doing 
business. We look at the world and say that all things are 
changed. The old things have passed away, and all 
things have become new, but there are some things which 
do not change. The organization of great business con- 
cerns with millions of capital, and the employment of 
thousands upon thousands of organized laborers changed 
conditions so that the old have passed away, and all have 
become new, but it does not change principles; it does not 
change the just relations of man to man ; it does not change 
the basis of just dealing between man and man; it does 
not change their mutual relationship, or their mutual 



Labor and Capital 433 

interest. It may obscure such interests and relationships, 
but they exist, because the only true basis of association 
of men is the recognition of the immutable, sacred prin- 
ciples of right and wrong. The good is eternal; it never 
changes, and every contention and every difference ex- 
isting among men must be finally settled on the basis of 
triumph of right. 

Mr. Piatt stoutly opposed the Anti-Option bill in 
1893, — a bill "defining options and futures, imposing 
special taxes on dealers therein, and requiring such 
dealers and persons engaged in selling certain products 
to obtain license. " He not only believed the bill to be 
unconstitutional, but declared that the principle con- 
tended for by its advocates was the most dangerous prin- 
ciple to the Republic and to the States which within 
his experience in the Senate had ever been announced. 
"I believe," he said, in antagonizing the bill, "if the 
principle announced here is adopted and sustained by 
the Supreme Court that from that day we may date 
the decline and ruin of the Republic." The bill was 
defended only upon two constitutional grounds, one 
that it might be passed under the taxing power of 
Congress, the other that it might be passed under the 
power to regulate commerce. To his mind there was 
not a shadow of reason to support either of these 
contentions. While by no means a strict construction- 
ist of the Constitution, he denied that the right of 
taxation carried with it the right to destroy. "The 
power to lay taxes is limited by the inherent necessity 
of the case to the principle that the exaction must be a 
tax; and not a sweeping appropriation of the whole." 
There had been no question of such momentous conse- 
quence before Congress since the War of the Rebellion : 

The deliberate announcement that Congress may de- 
28 



434 Orville H. Piatt 

stroy individual property of any kind in any State and may 
prohibit individual business of any kind in any State is 
the most dangerous doctrine ever proclaimed in this cham- 
ber since it was announced that States had a right to secede 
from the Union and that the Government had no power to 
coerce them. 

I beg Senators who think that in an incautious moment 
they have in some way become committed to the passage 
of this bill to stop and consider what they will be committed 
to if the bill passes. Can a Senator commit himself to the 
doctrine that Congress may destroy all individual property 
at will in every State of the Union, may prohibit all in- 
dividual business at will in every State of the Union? 
For that is the meat and the essence of this bill. 

As for the contention that a contract of sale might 
be regarded as interstate commerce, he declared that 
it did violence not only to the use of language but to 
the well-established idea of every lawyer, and that it 
was as broad and far-reaching in its consequences for 
injury as the claim that Congress might destroy every- 
thing which it had the right to tax : 

It does not rest on the ground whether the business 
proposed to be prohibited is moral or immoral — there is 
no distinction as to the power of Congress with regard to 
such contracts — ^but it rests upon the broad ground that 
before the articles which are the subjects of the contract 
of sale have in any sense become subjects of interstate 
commerce the contracts themselves may be an injury 
to interstate commerce, and are therefore properly sup- 
pressed and made criminal. 

If that be true, there is no contract of sale which can be 
imagined in this broad land which cannot be made criminal. 
I care not whether it is a gambling contract or a legitimate 
contract; I care not whether it is made on the board of 
trade or in the store of the wholesale or retail merchant or 



Labor and Capital 435 

in the home of the citizen; I care not whether it is a c(jn- 
tract for immediate dehvery or for future dehvery, if the 
power exists as claimed, every business contract can be 
made criminal, if only Congress can be impelled by outside 
clamor and by demagogism to declare it illegal, and the 
further contention is correct, that Congress having de- 
clared the fact, it cannot be questioned. It is a dangerous 
doctrine. It will be hke that class o^ "instructions which 
return to plague the inventor" if it be adopted. . . . 

I am surprised and appalled that it should be thought 
possible that Senators can deliberately vote to give the 
Congress of the United States power, under either of these 
clauses, to cut up root and branch all business in the States, 
to destroy at its own sweet will all individual property 
in the United States. The advocates of the single tax 
theory will find here an easy way to the accomplish- 
ment of their ultimate purpose, that all the lands shall be 
gathered, as it were, into the treasury of the general gov- 
ernment and be owned by it; the advocates of taking con- 
trol of all corporate agencies in the United States will find 
here an easy and smooth path by which their ends may be 
accomplished when they make Senators fear that to vote 
against such a measure is to lose their party support. 

Before speaking against the bill he had received a 
dispatch from the convention of Connecticut farmers 
requesting the Connecticut iSenators to support the 
measure by their vote and influence, referring to 
which he said: 

I respect the farmers of the State of Connecticut. I 
respect them too much to believe that they expect me to 
vote for a measure which I believe to be in violation of the 
Constitution of the United States, in subversion of the 
rights of the State, and for a principle which, if carried out 
to its logical conclusion, will leave us without self-governing 
States. . . . When any considerable body of men in 



436 Orville H. Piatt 

my State desire me to vote for a measure, it is my duty to 
carefully consider that measure so that I may not come 
hastily to a conclusion in opposition to it ; but I trust that 
there has been given me courage, if I believe a bill to be 
unconstitutional or an unlawful or illegitimate exercise of 
the constitutional powers of Congress, to vote against it 
even if every member of every class in my State requested 
me to vote for it ; and I have confidence enough in my con- 
stituents to beheve that they would respect my judgment 
and honor my conclusion. 

The practical results so far as the farmers were 
concerned he did not discuss at great length, because 
in his mind the question of whether the Constitution 
should be observed far transcended the question of 
whether the farmers of the United States were to get 
two or three cents a bushel more for their wheat or a 
cent or two a pound more for their cotton. But he 
was Chairman of the Sub-Committee of the Judiciary 
Committee which took testimony in reference to the 
bill, and nothing in the testimony had convinced him 
that the farmers would derive the slightest benefit from 
its passage. He did not believe that the average price 
for a year of wheat or cotton was a cent lower or a 
cent higher by reason of dealings in options and futures : 

But who is to fix the price of the productions of the farm- 
ers if this bill passes? Have they thought of that? Do 
they not understand, with the present power of concen- 
tration of capital, with the present haste to make riches, 
that the price will still be fixed by some one else, and not 
by themselves? Has it ever entered their minds that the 
price hereafter for those agricultural productions will be 
fixed in the matter of grain by the millers and the elevator 
men and the commission merchants, and in the case of 
cotton by the commission merchants? Do the farmers 



Labor and Capital 437 

expect that the price will be fixed by the millers and cleva 
tor men and the railroad and commission men any more 
to their advantage than they now suppose it to be fixed 
by the men who deal in future contracts ? 

Mr. President, it is not five years' time since the farmers 
of the West were almost on the point of open resistance, be- 
cause their rights were not respected and because of the 
wrongs which they supposed were being inflicted upon them 
by the elevator men of the West. Pass this bill, and it 
will not be five years more before they will believe that the 
millers and the elevator men of the West are unconscionably 
making and fixing the price of their grain. How can it 
be otherwise with regard to all crops raised by the farmers 
of the United States, three fourths of which must be sold 
within ninety days from the time they are harvested? 
Who is to buy except the men who by the consolidation 
and aggregation of capital have the means of buying that 
immense quantity which is not required for immediate 
consumption? Do the farmers suppose that the millers 
and the elevator men will consult them as to what the price 
shall be? Do they suppose, when the millers and elevator 
men have stored their elevators and their warehouses full 
and have all they want, they will not say "we do not want 
to buy"? Then, with this immense quantity coming upon 
the market, how is the price to be fixed except to the dis- 
advantage of the men who produce the crops? 

Mr. President, I commend to the advocates of this bill 
the scriptural phrase: "They who take the sword shall 
perish by the sword." We have come to the parting of 
the ways. Shall we stand by what has been understood 
to be the uncontested principles of the Constitution, or 
shall we depart from them at the demand of the anarchistic, 
the sociaUstic, and the populistic agitators of the country. 
I firmly beUeve that the passage of this bill will open 
up a highway along which every constitutional heresy can 
make progress, along which the cohorts of social disorder 
and fanaticism may march to the ruin of the Repubhc. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

REGULATION OF CORPORATIONS 

Favors Reasonable Control — Opposes Sherman Anti-Trust Bill — 

In Sympathy with Roosevelt's Plans — Against Littlefield 

Bill in 1902 — Opposes Income and Corporation Tax. 

TO the indiscriminate assaults upon trusts and 
corporations which cut so large a figure in the 
politics of his time Mr. Piatt was utterly opposed. 
That there were evils to be remedied he recognized, 
and he was not reluctant to acknowledge the necessity 
for judicious federal regulation, but the mad cry 
against organized capital, as if in itself it were an 
affront to public morals, rang harshly on his ear. To 
his mind no issue of morality was necessarily involved. 
The problem was strictly one of the practical advisa- 
bility of insuring business competition by statute, and 
regulating by law the concentration of wealth, and 
it resolved itself into two simple questions: First, 
shall we by law, if we can, provide that competition 
shall be unlimited and unrestrained; second, shall 
we, if we can, limit the extent to which combination 
may proceed short of absolute monopoly? Within 
those bounds he thus formulated his own position: 

I hold that a reasonable limitation of competition is wise, 
that a reasonable limitation of prices is wise, and that a 
reasonable control of production is wise. 

438 



Regulation of Corporations 439 

Any interference by legislation with such orderly 
development of natural laws could result only in evil, 
yet the community owed to itself that in the process 
of natural expansion, business and capital should 
always have before their eyes the possibility of whole- 
some and effective restraint. The word "trust," he 
pointed out in the earlier days of the discussion, was 
used indiscriminately. If the original meaning were 
to be retained there were really no trusts in the United 
States. Aggregate capital was not necessarily a trust, 
even though it were large. Nothing was a trust except 
where different concerns which had been in competition 
pooled their issues and transferred all their property 
to a new company organized for the purpose of taking 
over their property so as practically to create a mono- 
poly of the business in which they were engaged: 

If that condition of things ever comes about — the es- 
tablishment of a monopoly in business, by whatever way 
it shall be brought about — that thing is harmful and pre- 
judicial to the community. But consolidation without 
monopoly is an evolution of present conditions, and you 
can no more stop it than you can stop the tides or the sun- 
light. It is a law, just as much as any other natural law. 

He recalled the time, during his youth and early 
manhood, when no man's social, moral, or business 
circle was more than a few miles in extent, and all 
competition was of necessity within that limited circle. 
But there came into the world certain new agents, 
steam and electricity, the result of which was to widen 
and broaden the field of activity, until it had come about 
that instead of a little community circumscribed by a 
horizon fifty or one hundred miles away, it was co- 
extensive with the globe. It was as utterly impossible 



440 Orville H. Piatt 

to transact business in these days on the old principles, 
as it was to go back to the stage-coach. Whether the 
change from old conditions to new was merely a pass- 
ing phase or not, we could not help it. We had 
talked about railroad consolidation, but the country 
would not go back to the little railroads of earlier 
days, each with its line of one hundred miles or so, 
each with its own rates and its own idea of business. 
As railroad consolidation had come to stay, and must 
be subject to regulations to prevent unnecessary dam- 
age to the community, so the consolidation of capital 
had come to stay and must be regulated. He was 
mindful of the fact that we were not the first to consoli- 
date capital and great concerns in a business way. 
England, France, and Germany were quick to catch 
the idea that the field of business operations had been 
extending : 

Whereas, a few years ago, if a man in Germany wanted to 
buy anything in London, he had to sit down and write a 
letter to go by slow post, a week to go there, another to 
get an answer, and three or four weeks before the goods 
could be delivered, he can now sit down in an office and 
telegraph and do it all in a day. Business has to accommo- 
date itself to these conditions. If a man in Chicago wants 
to buy a cargo in New York, or sell a cargo there, he does 
not send a letter to go by post — he goes to his telephone: 
" How much will you give me for a cargo of wheat? " " So 
much." "I will sell it to you to-morrow and transfer the 
money for it." It involves the necessity for greater 
capital, and the people in England, Germany, and France 
were the first to find it out. If we did not do it we would 
have to withdraw from the race and lag behind in the busi- 
ness procession of the world. The thing has come to stay; 
it is a necessity, and all this has worked for the benefit of 



Regulation of Corporations 441 

the community, so that when we get through this transition 
period, every one will be better off for it. 

At the same time steps must be taken to regulate 
and control: 

The remedy is not to kill great establishments carrying 
on this business, whether they be corporations, partner- 
ships, or individuals, or to kill the business. If there are 
any evils, they are such as grow out of the transaction of 
business anywhere, whether by individuals or partnerships 
or corporations. A corporation, no matter how much its 
capital, which simply tries to take advantage of all econ- 
omies to cheapen the process of production and distribution, 
tries to get only a fair profit and reasonable, is a blessing 
to the community, I do not care if its capital is one hundred 
millions or one hundred billions. The difficulty is that we 
cannot always trust property to do those things in a way 
which the judgment of mankind says is right and fair. 
The problem is how to control them; how to keep people 
honest ; how to keep corporations right and fair and honest 
in their dealings, and that subject is a great one. It does 
not do to go about denouncing trusts — some one must pre- 
sent some plan, either national or state, which, without 
destroying or crippling business, and thereby endangering 
the country, will keep them along the path of honesty. 
It is useless to say that this is a political issue, or can be 
made a political issue in a campaign, until some one thinks 
he has discovered that which is very hard to discover, 
a proper method of regulation without injury. When some 
man discovers that, and proposes to do this or that thing, 
then the people will look at that, and there may be an 
honest pohtical issue raised, whether the proposed plan 
will accomplish the purpose to regulate without a greater 
damage — a damage which more than compensates for the 
benefit proposed. The question of how trusts are to be 
dealt with is one to be thought out, not by demagogues, 
but by honest men. 



442 Orville H. Piatt 

Such were his views on the subject of trusts as they 
were set down in 1899, when the issue was especially 
alive, and such they remained in substance to the end. 

When John Sherman brought in his Anti-Trust bill 
from the Senate Finance Committee, in the winter of 
1890, Mr. Piatt urged that the measure be referred 
to the Judiciary Committee for further consideration 
and amendment. He felt that in its existing form it 
was hasty and ill-considered legislation, and that, 
if a measure of such far-reaching importance was to be 
enacted, it should be the ripest product of the mature 
judgment of the best lawyers of the Senate. He 
believed the bill as it stood to be contrary to public 
policy, and of questionable constitutionality. When 
he was asked by Senator Washburn of Minnesota, 
" if any special harm would come to the country or 
anybody else by the passage of the bill if it should 
afterwards be held to be unconstitutional by the 
Supreme Court of the United States, " he replied : 

Whenever Congress passes a bill which the concurrent 
sentiment of Congress believes to be unconstitutional, it 
does a greater damage to the people of this country than 
is well to be calculated. 

Pitted against the most influential leaders of his 
own party in the Senate — against what at the moment 
seemed to be a majority of the Senate — he unfalteringly 
made plain his opposition to the bill in the form then 
held. When the vote on the question of reference 
finally came, he was one of eight Republicans who 
joined the Democratic minority, carrying the motion 
to refer by the narrow margin of 31 to 28. When 
the bill came back from the Judiciary Committee in 
its modified form, he voted for it, as did every other 



Regulation of Corporations 443 

Senator recorded, with a single exception, althoui^^h 
it did not, even in its revised form, command his appro- 
bation. Speaking of the bill, while still in its imperfect 
stage, he attacked, not only the merits of the measure, 
but also the methods adopted by Mr. Sherman as Chair- 
man of the Finance Committee, to force it through the 
Senate. Sherman never forgave him for the criticisms 
he offered on the floor; yet time has fully vindicated 
his course. 

While the bill was still in its ill-considered form he 
argued against it with a directness, force, and courage 
not excelled during all the years of controversy and 
agitation which followed in the wake of its enactment. 
In the course of the debate he said : 

I do not like to vote against this bill. I believe that 
there are combinations in this country which are criminal, 
but I believe that every man in business — I do not care 
whether he is a farmer, a laborer, a miner, a sailor, a manu- 
facturer, a merchant — has a right, a legal and a moral 
right, to obtain a fair profit upon his business and his 
work; and if he is driven by fierce competition to a spot 
where his business is unremunerative, I believe it is his 
right to combine for the purpose of raising prices until 
they shall be fair and remunerative. This bill makes no 
distinction. It says that every combination which has 
the effect in any way to advance prices is illegal and void. 
The Senator from Ohio in the first speech which he made 
here admitted that there were combinations in which 
there was no wrong, and yet he levelled his bill at them 
equally with the combinations which are doing wrong. . . . 
Whenever the price of anything is below what it costs to 
produce it, it ought to be raised, and any combination for 
the purpose of raising it to a point where the price is fair 
and reasonable ought not to be condemned; it ought to 
be encouraged. It will not do, because a few concerns 



444 Orville H. Piatt 

in this country are attempting to put prices where they are 
unreasonable, to enrich themselves beyond a fair compensa- 
tion or equivalent for their capital, their skill, and their en- 
terprise — it will not do to cast out your drag-net and bring 
within the condemnation of your law all the legitimate 
business enterprises of the country that are struggling 
along and trying to obtain only fair and reasonable prices 
for their goods, and who are giving life to labor, and peace 
and plenty to the whole land. . . . 

The theory of this bill is that prices must never be ad- 
vanced by any two or more persons, no matter how ruin- 
ously low they may be. That theory I denounce as utterly 
untenable, as immoral. . . . 

I am ready to go to the people of the State of Connecticut ; 
I have faith and confidence in them; and when I tell them 
that here is a bill which, under the guise of dealing with 
trusts, would strike a cruel blow at their entire industries, 
I know that they will see it and understand it ; and if there 
be a people anywhere in this country who cannot under- 
stand it, it is better for a Senator to answer to his judgment 
and his conscience than it is to answer to their misappre- 
hensions. 

I am sorry, Mr. President, that we have not had a bill 
which had been carefully prepared, which had been thought- 
fully prepared, which had been honestly prepared to meet 
the object which we all desire to meet. The conduct of 
this Senate for the past three days — and I make no per- 
sonal allusions — has not been in the line of the honest 
preparation of a bill to prohibit and punish trusts. It has 
been in the line of getting some bill with that title that we 
might go to the country with. The questions of whether 
a bill would be operative, of how it would operate, or 
whether it was within the power of Congress to enact it, 
have been whistled down the wind in this Senate as idle 
talk, and the whole effort has been to get some bill headed : 
"A Bill to Punish Trusts" with which to go to the country. 
. . . We should legislate better than that. Every effort- 



Regulation of Corporations 445 

to refer this bill to any committee that would give it careful 
and honest consideration has been voted down in this 
Senate, and it is better to vote the bill down than it is to 
go to the people with a measure which shall resemble the 
apples which grew in the region of that fated plain on which 
once stood the city of Sodom. We may make this bill 
look like a beautiful remedy; we may call it a bill to punish 
trusts, but when you attempt to put it in operation it 
will be 

Like that Dead Sea fruit, 

All ashes to the taste; 

or it will be found to be a blow struck at the legitimate 
industries of the country such as they will not recover 
from in years and years. 

The regulation of trusts was one of the legacies of 
the McKinley administration, the responsibihties of 
which were assumed by President Roosevelt, and it 
was one of the first problems left unsolved at the time 
of McKinley's death with which his successor under- 
took to grapple. When Senator Piatt met the new 
President at Farmington, a few weeks after the change 
of administration, they discussed the project which Mr. 
Roosevelt even then had in mind for the further regu- 
lation of combinations of capital. On returning home, 
the Senator examined the authorities with care, and on 
November 13, 1901, he wrote to the President as 
follows : 

Since I saw you at Farmington, I have been reading up 
the cases decided by the Supreme Court, relating to the 
business of trust organizations, with the result that I am 
quite doubtful whether Congress can command the power to 
regulate interstate commerce, going so far as to force cor- 
porations doing an interstate business to make reports to 
United States officials. It seems to me that the Supreme 
Court confines the power of regulation to the courts alone, 



446 Orville H. Piatt 

and holds that jurisdiction does not attach to the commerce 
until the articles of commerce are delivered to the common 
carrier for transportation to another State. The court 
will have to go further than it has gone yet, to hold that 
the power to regulate commerce includes also the right to 
regulate the corporation, and the language of the opinions 
seems to me to indicate that it had decided otherwise. The 
court might possibly hold that a statute of that sort, if 
passed by Congress, would raise a political, and not a 
judicial question, and get around it in that way. 

I write this because I very much desire the enactment 
of such legislation, if it would be constitutional, and yet 
I would not wish you to recommend specific legislation, 
which, if enacted, would be declared unconstitutional 
by the courts. I do not go so far as to say that in my 
judgment, the court would so hold, but I fear it would. 
It is a question that requires careful study — more careful 
than I have yet been able to give to it. 

The closing sentence of this letter was strikingly 
characteristic of the man. He never felt that he had 
given sufficient thought or enough careful study to 
any subject, even though he had penetrated to the 
depths. He still wished for more time and felt that 
he had not exhausted all sources of information. It 
was a quality which stood the Roosevelt administration 
in good stead, for during three years of strenuous 
battling with economic problems the President found 
the Connecticut Senator constantly at his shoulder 
dispensing sane encouragement derived from faithful 
thought. With the President's determination faith- 
fully to enforce existing laws he was in complete accord ; 
but not so with the proposal to adopt a constitutional 
amendment giving Congress greater power over corpo- 
rations. He favored the creation of the Bureau of Cor- 



Regulation of Corporations 447 

porations in the Department of Commerce and Labor 
when that department was organized in 1903, and was 
glad to see $500,000 appropriated to insure the more 
vigorous prosecution of illegal combinations of capital, 
but he opposed more drastic anti-trust legislation 
during the same session of Congress. Mr. Littlefield 
of Maine had handled in the House a bill requiring 
corporations engaged in interstate commerce to make 
returns, prohibiting rebates and discriminations, and 
the use of interstate commerce to destroy competition. 
It embodied about everything in the way of anti-trust 
regulation which had ever been demanded, and when 
it came to a vote, Democrats and Republicans, indis- 
criminately, scrambled to get their names written 
right in the record so that it passed unanimously, 
only six representatives expressing dissent by answer- 
ing "present" when their names were called. When 
the bill reached the Senate the Judiciary Committee 
directed a favorable report. Mr. Hoar as Chairman 
presented it. No sooner had Mr. Hoar concluded than 
Mr. Piatt was on his feet. "I rise to say for myself 
that as a member of the Judiciary Committee I cannot 
concur in the report which has just been made." He 
observed : 

Of course this is not the time or place to give reasons 
for my dissent, but briefly they may be stated thus: A 
large proportion of the bill, that which came over from the 
House, I think has been more wisely and appropriately 
treated in legislation which has been already enacted at 
this session ; and as to the new matter proposed by amend- 
ments, I think there are unconstitutional provisions in 
them, and that if they were within the constitutional 
authority of Congress, they are mischievous and would 
work great injury to the business of the United States. 



448 Orville H. Piatt 

Nothing more was heard of the bill in the Senate; 
conservative counsels prevailed, and a measure which 
had been regarded with political favor slept on the cal- 
endar till the Congress came to an end. Thus he held 
an even course, discouraging extravagance of legislation 
on the one hand while on the other urging a wise re- 
straint of capital and the maintenance of law. 

He did not hesitate to impress his convictions upon 
those of his acquaintance who were allied to great cor- 
porations. To one of them he wrote in the last month 
of his life : 

All this railroad and corporation business by which the 
country is drained of its money to build up enterprises 
upon a capitalization of two or three times the actual 
value of the property is what is running us to the devil at 
railroad speed, and whenever Congress gets an opportunity 
to put its foot on it, it ought to do it. 

Shortly after the election in 1904 he wrote: 

I do not believe that any very radical things are going 
to be done this winter, either in Congress or at the White 
House, but I shall probably know better by and by. I 
myself feel that the beef trust ought to be pursued, and I 
think that the tobacco trust needs a little anti-trust medi- 
cine; still, that there is going to be a general drive at 
corporations, I think very improbable. 

The cry against political contributions from corpora- 
tions was loud in the closing days of the campaign of 
1904, but he could see no special reason why it should 
be heeded. Writing a few days after the election to 
William E. Chandler, who had been impressing upon 
him the importance of prohibiting such contributions 
he said: 



Regulation of Corporations 449 

I do not quite share your feeling that we have got to 
stop pohtical contributions from corporations. I do not 
beheve in a great campaign fund. I was glad that we were 
not going to have a large one this year. I think the fault 
lies in the magnitude of the money which has heretofore 
been raised for campaign purposes, rather than in the fact 
that corporations may have contributed. "Corporation" 
is a very elastic word. I presume the Concord Monitor is 
a corporation — at any rate, almost every newspaper in the 
country is now, and I know of no reason why the ordinary 
corporations should not assist in the raising of a reasonable 
campaign fund. You certainly cannot draw the line 
between a corporation, as such, and individuals who are 
members of it. The thing to do in my judgment, is to 
frown upon the raising of an excessive campaign fund. 

In the consideration of the income tax provision 
of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff bill Senator Piatt had a 
further opportunity to demonstrate his fair-mindedness 
with progressiveness and conservatism combined. 
While he opposed the income tax as then proposed, 
he did not declare his opposition to the principle in- 
volved, but in debating the question he took occasion 
to express his opinion on the advisability of imposing 
such a tax on corporations. In a speech delivered on 
June 22, 1894, he declared that his objections to the 
tax as proposed, were twofold. 

First, that it was unnecessary for the purpose of 
raising sufficient revenue and was resorted to as a 
means of breaking down the system of protective 
custom duties; and second, that its provisions were 
extremely faulty, inequitable, unjust, and, by their com- 
plication, difficult of execution. If it were a necessary 
tax and were justly and fairly constructed, he should 
not make any opposition to it. If the necessities 



29 



450 Orville H. Piatt 

of the Government required the imposition of some 
tax to raise revenue over and beyond what might be 
raised from customs duties and duties upon tobacco 
and spirits, he should regard the income tax as the 
next best method of taxation, but it should not be 
resorted to when the necessities of the Government did 
not require it simply for the purpose of breaking down 
the protective system, or for the purpose of conciliating 
those who objected. He declared that the rights of 
property were just as sacred as the rights of life and 
liberty and that no country which had not a just regard 
for the right of private property could go on pro- 
gressively as a republic: 

I do not understand the prejudice against the accumu- 
lation of wealth. I can understand why it is that there 
should be a prejudice against people getting wealth by im- 
proper means. I can understand why it should be thought 
to be a great evil that people should be able in a country to 
acquire large fortunes by illegitimate methods, by methods 
which the common judgment of mankind does not approve ; 
but how it is possible that there should be a prejudice 
against any man, who by industry, enterprise, frugality, 
economy, and good judgment in investment has accumu- 
lated property, I cannot understand, I do not beHeve 
there is any such real prejudice existing. 

I believe that demagogues appeal to prejudice, appeal 
to a sentiment which is perhaps to be found in almost 
every human breast, when they appeal to people to take 
such action, poHtical or legislative, as will in some way 
interfere with and cripple people who are better off than 
they are. There never can be an equal distribution of 
wealth. If there were to be an equal distribution of wealth, 
its holding would soon be unequal. The history of civili- 
zation shows that there never will be and there never can 
be any equal holding of wealth. 



Regulation of Corporations 451 

Even if the wild idea of having everything owned by 
the State could be adopted there would soon be found 
ways in which certain individuals would acquire substan- 
tially great wealth, while others would be in a state of 
comparative poverty. . . . This beautiful idea of every- 
thing in common and every one having just as much as 
any one else is impracticable in this world. 

Now, I say nothing in defence of those who acquire 
fortunes improperly, and yet there seems to be a prevailing 
idea that because some people acquire fortunes improperly 
therefore the cry should be raised — "Down with every 
man who owns anything. " All the ideas of the past, the 
acquisition of property and the accumulation of wealth by 
means which every one says is legitimate, which the com- 
mon judgment of mankind approves, are to be thrown to 
the winds, and if any one has any money he is to be mulct 
in some way and his property taken away from him. 

I have no sympathy with that kind of an idea, whether 
it comes from one party or another or from one section or 
another. The right of property lies at the foundation 
of government; the idea of the protection of property lies 
at the foundation of all governments. The Democratic 
party will make nothing by attempting to favor the wild 
notions about the inequality which exists in the country 
and the wild notions which seem to make it criminal almost 
for any one by industry, enterprise, earnestness, and good 
fortune to have acquired some property. . . . 

Mr. President, a large portion of this inveighing against 
any one who has, by proper means, acquired some property 
comes, after all, from the passions of envy and covetous- 
ness. A farmer upon his farm in the West, having a hard 
time to get along, finding that his crops do not bring him 
enough to yield what he considers a fair return to enable 
him to live as he thinks he is entitled to Hve, draws his 
load of com to town. He finds there a man who was a 
farmer, but has owned some lots where a city has grown 
up. He finds that his old time farmer friend, who was in 



452 Orville H. Piatt 

the same situation with himself financially, has sold out 
his city lots and has now become a nabob, a millionaire; 
and immediately he begins to be envious of his former 
associate. He is not willing that he should have the benefit 
of his fortunate situation and fortunate trade. He begins 
to think that in some way or other he snould have been the 
man to enjoy that fortune. Then he begins to envy the 
man who has acquired the fortune. , . . 

Every one fixes his own standard of wealth, and then he 
wants to make that wealth within a twelvemonth, and live 
all the while during the twelvemonth as if he had it on 
hand on the first day of January. That is the foundation 
of this populistic sentiment in this country. It is not that 
they complain so much of the improper and unequal dis- 
tribution of wealth as it is the feeling of jealousy that they 
have not been able to acquire as much wealth as they 
desire. 

Mr. President, you cannot conduct a government suc- 
cessfully by giving way to that sort of feeling; and it is 
not statesmanlike to appeal to that sort of feeling. 

But without regard to the merits of an income tax 
he asserted that there was no reason why the tax should 
apply to a corporation as a corporation. It was no 
part of any income scheme that had ever been put in 
operation or devised in the world, and he declared his 
opposition to it without qualification: 

It is the sentiment that in some way or other the Legis- 
lature must get at the corporations, which accounts for 
the tax upon the incomes of corporations in this bill. It 
has been a remark made more than once in the Senate, and 
so publicly that I may refer to it during the consideration 
of this Tariff bill, that the persons trying to pass it desire 
to "get at the rich men " and that is why this tax is laid on 
corporations. They wish some way or other to get at 
corporations. 



Regulation of Corporations 453 

This taxing of corporations by an income tax has no 
precedent to sustain it. It has never been advocated by 
any poHtical economists in any scheme of income taxation. 
There is no more reason why we should tax the income of 
a corporation because it is a corporation than why we should 
tax the income of a partnership because it is a partnership. 
The truth about this matter of corporations is just this: 
A corporation should be treated as an individual. If it 
behaves itself it should be respected ; if it undertakes to do 
wrong it should be restrained. A corporation properly con- 
ducted, conducted on principles of equity and fair dealing, is 
a benefit to the country and our civiHzation. More than that, 
it is an indispensable agent of our civilization. Its advent 
marks progress. If it goes into unfair deaHng, inequitable 
doings, then it is a disgrace and a shame. But that is true 
of the individual just as it is of the corporation. . . . 

It will stop the development of my State to tax these 
corporations. No one is going hereafter to form a joint- 
stock corporation to carry on business if the net profits 
of that corporation are to have an income tax of two per 
cent, imposed upon them, when business carried on in 
another way is not required to pay a tax as a business, 
and when a partnership business is not taxed. We shall 
have no more of these most beneficent corporations scat- 
tered all over my State, the hum of whose wheels and of 
whose industry can be heard the moment you enter the 
State, as you pass through it, and until you leave it, no 
matter in what direction you may go. . . . 

What should be the scheme of an income tax? It should 
be to tax the personal incomes of individuals which exceed 
the amount exempted, and in that way you get all the 
income of the country. But here you will observe that 
confusion is created by trying to tax the corporation. 
There is no necessity for it, because, if you put the income 
tax upon personal incomes, you reach all the earnings of 
the corporation in the hands of the individuals whose 
incomes exceed the exemption. . . . 



454 Orville H. Piatt 

If we must have an income tax, the honest, just, equit- 
able way is to make a small exemption and tax whatever 
income the individual has above that exemption. By 
that way you reach everything and make everyone pay 
in proportion to what he is worth. The whole matter of 
going outside of it to reach corporations is founded on 
the idea — I had almost called it an insane idea — that be- 
cause a business is conducted under an association which 
is called a corporation it deserves to be struck at by 
legislation. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE LAW 

The Initiatory Legislation of 1887 — Opposes Anti-Pooling Clause 
— Position Justified by Events — Favors Elkins Bill — Opposed 
to Hasty Legislation in 1905. — "Too Great a Subject to Play 
with." 

A CONSPICUOUS opportunity came to Senator 
Piatt to demonstrate his conservatism, sound 
sense, and courage in matters affecting the transporta- 
tion interests of the country at the time of the enact- 
ment of the Interstate Commerce law in 1887. In the 
preparation of this law he played a vitally important 
part, and to him in its effective features the final form 
of the law is due. He was the second member of the 
Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, and to his 
constructive ability and his capacity as a lawyer the 
Committee instinctively turned. The comprehensive- 
ness of the work which he performed on this measure 
as on many others will never be known except to those 
few who watched him day by day and took note of 
the unobtrusive, modest, efficient way in which he 
grasped each problem as it arose. 

There was one provision of the law which popular 
clamor finally forced upon Congress for which he could 
not stand. This was the so-called "anti-pooling 
clause." He opposed it in the Senate committee, in the 
Conference Committee, and finally in the Senate after 
the Senate conferrees had yielded to the demand of the 

455 



456 Orville H. Piatt 

House. He also vigorously opposed the amendment 
to the "short-haul" clause which was proposed by the 
Conference Committee. The accuracy of his political 
foresight was never more clearly manifest than in his 
course at this time. He argued that to forbid pooling 
arrangements would necessarily compel railroads to 
consolidate. That is exactly what happened. He 
argued that the substitution in the short-haul clause 
of the words "the shorter being included within the 
longer distance" in place of the words "and from the 
same original point of departure or to the same point 
of arrival" would lead to confusion of interpretation 
by courts and commissions. That also happened. 
It is not too much to say that if the bill as originally 
favored by Senator Piatt, without the amendments 
forced by the House upon the Conference Committee 
and the Senate , had become a law in 1 8 8 7 , the demoraliz- 
ing railroad rate agitation of 1906 would never have 
taken place. Such moderation as Senator Piatt advo- 
cated at the earlier time would have obviated the 
evils which President Roosevelt set out to correct 
twenty years later. ^ 

» "As a member of the Senate committee Mr. Piatt was indefati- 
gable in his study of this difficult subject. His speeches in oppo- 
sition to certain sections of the Interstate Commerce act which he 
believed to be ill-judged are without doubt the ablest presentation 
of the subject ever made by any man in the United States Congress. 
Had Mr. Piatt's advice been taken at that time many of the diffi- 
culties under which we have suffered both financially and indus- 
trially in the matter of railroad policy would have been much 
mitigated." — Arthur T. Hadley, April, 1905. 

"In the Interstate Commerce law of 1887 was included a pro- 
hibition of the pooling by competitive railway carriers of freight 
or the earnings of freights. That was right. The old money pool 
and freight pool was a harmful thing to commerce and a harmful 
thing to the railroads engaged in the commerce, but Senator Piatt 
of Connecticut, a great statesman and one of the most faithful 



The Interstate Commerce Law 457 

On January 6th and 7th, when the conference report 
on the Interstate Commerce bill was before the Senate, 
Mr. Piatt made his only elaborate speech in connection 
with the legislation. It was his habit not to argue with 
the Senate unless argument was necessary, but in this 
case he felt that there were things for him to say which 
could not be so effectively said by another : 

I am in favor of legislation for the regulation of the 
business of the railroads of the country within the extreme 
limits of the Constitution which I understand to be for 
the regulation of that portion of the business done upon 
the railroads of the country which comes within the defi- 
nition of "interstate commerce." I wish that it were so 
that Congress had power to go further in the subject of 
railroad legislation. . . . 

The basis upon which we must legislate, as it seems to 
me, is simple. The justification for legislation is that the 
railroad business, unlike other business, is of a mixed 
nature. It is partly private business and partly public 
business. I think that we should refrain as far as possible 
from legislating to affect purely private business in this 
country. But when a private business is "charged with 
a public use, " as the phrase is, when the railroad undertakes 
to discharge a public duty as well as to conduct its private 
business, it is eminently proper and necessary that there 

men who ever served this country in the Senate at Washington, 
tried to the best of his ability to modify that proposition so as to 
permit railway corporations engaged in interstate commerce to 
make traffic contracts reasonable in their character, to be made 
public, and to be subject to abrogation by the commission whenever 
the public interest required it. I opposed that. 

"But, gentlemen, Senator Piatt was right, and I and those who 
were with me were wrong. Much of what is found to be ob- 
jectionable in the situation of to-day would have been averted if 
the legislation in respect of which I speak had been enacted." — 
John C. Spooner, at the dinner of the N. Y. Chamber of Commerce, 
November 21, 1907. 



458 Orville H. Piatt 

should be legislation to make sure that the public business 
is conducted for the public welfare, that its public duty- 
is faithfully discharged, and that no abuses are allowed 
to exist. 

I said the basis of legislation was simple. It should 
be the enforcement of the common law — that, and nothing 
more. Congress may not justify itself, in my judgment^ 
in stepping outside of the well-defined principles of the 
common law in legislation. Those principles affecting 
interstate railway business have had a growth of centuries. 
They provide the remedy for every difficulty which can 
arise in the operation of railroads. The application of 
those principles to every evil or abuse which can be charged 
against railroads and railroad operations will solve the 
difficulty and remedy the evil. The difficulty is only in 
the application. 

So, then, I think we should confine our legislation to 
the enforcement of the common law. That is simple. 
It is only this; it can be expressed in a word: The rates 
charged by common carriers must be reasonable, and such 
carriers must charge only like rates for like services. That 
is all. It has been the intention of this committee to con- 
fine legislation within these limits. A careful study of the 
bill as it was passed by the Senate will show that we did 
not go outside of those limits, that we undertook to make 
no new law for the regulation of railroads and the business 
of railroads and interstate commerce in this country, but 
that we did undertake to hold the railroad management 
of this country up to the strict letter of the common law. 

On the question of pooling he spoke with special 
emphasis for on this he felt deeply : 

I challenge any man to show that the object or purpose 
or faithful observance of a pooling contract — by which 
I mean the apportionment of the competitive traffic, or 
of the earnings derived from such competitive traffic — can 



The Interstate Commerce Law 459 

be anything else except the maintenance of stable rates. 
It is supposed, I think, on the part of the pubHc, that in 
some way these railroad pools fix unreasonable rates. 

I challenge proof of it. I heard petitions presented at 
that desk this morning praying for the passage of this bill. 
For what purpose? To prevent excessive rates, dis- 
criminations, and pooling. It shows the utter and la- 
mentable ignorance of what pooHng contracts really are. 
There is not a man who ever studied them, there is not 
a man who ever investigated their operation, who will 
not tell you that the main purpose of them is to prevent 
discriminations; and yet here we have a bill in which we 
propose to make criminal the means which the railroad 
companies adopt to prevent discrimination. Others may 
agree to it for the sake of getting legislation. I will not. 

It is rarely that any public man predicts with preci- 
sion the effect of legislation which he favors or opposes, 
but in this instance the exceptional happened. Certain 
paragraphs of the speech which he entitled, "Shall 
Railroad Co-operation be Declared Criminal?" carried 
the genius of prophecy, because their inspiration came 
from simple common-sense: 

I wish to emphasize this point: George Stephenson said 
that where combination was possible, competition was 
impossible; and no man ever said a truer thing. This 
bill leaves open and invites the worst kind of combination 
which this country may fear — that is, the combination and 
consolidation of railroad corporate capital. . . . 

Why, Mr. President, the monopoHes of this country 
are built on the graves of weak competitors, and this bill 
invites that grand monopoly of railroad capital in this 
country which will be built upon the graves of railroads that 
are not able to stand in the competition, which railroad 
monopoly will be the master of the people. I have not 
learned that such results are to be regarded with favor. 



46o Orville H. Piatt 

I can not unlearn all the teachings of my youth at the 
demand of these economists, these professors of political 
economy, these railroad men, and these socialists. I believe 
that it is better to keep business in a good many hands, 
if you can, than to concentrate it in a few hands. I believe 
it is better to let the little stores in the country live than 
to build up the great mercantile establishments at their 
expense. I believe it is better to let the little factories 
live than to build up the great manufacturing corporations 
at their expense. I believe it is better to let the weak 
railroads live ir. this country than it is to build up one 
gigantic railroad corporation which shall occupy to the 
railroad business of the country the same position which 
the Western Union Telegraph Company occupies to the 
telegraph business of the country. 

I believe we are holding up a false standard to our 
young men. I believe that the "little farm well tilled" 
is better than many leagues of land in one ownership tilled 
by capitalists whose laborers come and go, and who have 
little sympathy with the proprietors; that a "little house 
well filled" is better than the marble palace with its in- 
terior decorations of gold, its hangings of silk, and artistic 
carpets from the marts of foreign nations, better in their 
tendency to the advancement of the prosperity of the 
nation and the welfare of the people. But this bill pre- 
sents these alternatives. 

. Although he failed to secure legislation in exactly 
the form he sought, he was gratified to have been so 
largely instrumental in placing in the statutes an act 
embodying needed regulation of interstate railway 
traffic, and he supported subsequently such measures 
as were proposed to perfect the act, especially the 
Elkins Act of 1903, which met the evils of rebates. 
It was never possible to secure the passage of a pooling 
bill, though more than one attempt was made. 



The Interstate Commerce Law 461 

When President Roosevelt incorporated in his annual 
message of December, 1904, his recommendation of 
legislation still further to curb the railroads, he felt 
that a mistake had been made, not because he was 
opposed to additional restrictions, but because he feared 
the introduction of the subject just then at the begin- 
ning of a short term of Congress would lead to fruitless 
agitation and a public demand for legislation which 
could not be wisely considered in so brief a time. As 
to the policy of bringing the subject to the front 
at that particular moment he held a clearly defined 
opinion : 

I am sorry that the President made the recommendation 
that he did — that is, in particular. It was very proper, 
of course, for him to call the attention of Congress to the 
subject, suggesting legislation calculated to remedy any 
defects or abuses that exist, and I do not think that he had 
really considered what the effect of giving to the Interstate 
Commerce Commission power to fix a rate which should go 
into operation at once, might be. I do not think he would 
now make just that recommendation, having had oppor- 
tunity to study the matter more at length. 

His foresight again was justified when in writing 
to a New Haven editor a week after the message had 
gone to Congress, he said : 

I should not be surprised if this proposition to give to 
the Interstate Commerce Commission power to declare fixed 
rates unreasonable, and to fix what is called a reasonable 
rate, to stand until such action is reversed by the courts, 
so got possession of the pubhc mind as to overshadow the 
tariff question entirely, and make people forget it. 

The cry for immediate action by Congress went up 
from every corner of the United States, and the House 



462 Orville H. Piatt 

Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, with 
suspicious alacrity, reported a bill to satisfy the cry. 
Mr. Piatt foresaw that the same popular pressure which 
had moved the House Committee to ill-considered 
action would be turned upon the Senate. His fore- 
bodings he expressed in a letter to S. C. Dunham of 
Hartford on February 2, 1905: 

This railway rate-making business has assumed the form 
of a craze, and I am told that the House of Representatives 
will pass the bill which has been reported from the Com- 
mittee there, probably unanimously, which will throw it 
upon the Senate at a time in the session when it is utterly 
impossible to give the matter intelligent consideration, 
and then the Senate will be accused of acting in the interest 
of railroads and corporations and be made to bear the re- 
sponsibility of what will be called "killing the bill." It is 
not a pleasant situation to contemplate. I do not know 
but that the craze may so affect the Senate that the bill 
may be hurried through the Senate without consideration. 
For one, I am willing to pass any proper and desirable 
legislation to remedy any evils or abuses in the matter of 
transportation, but I do not want to do foolish and indis- 
creet things. 

His premonition in regard to the pressure which 
would be brought to bear upon the Senate was to have 
a closer verification even than he had imagined; for 
before the passage of the bill by the House he dis- 
covered in his own home newspaper, the Hartford 
Courant, an editorial summons to the Senate to push 
the legislation through. He wrote at once to the 
editor of the Courant, his friend, Charles Hopkins 
Clark : 

I clipped from the Courant an editorial paragraph which 
I enclose. It surprised me just a little, because I felt 



The Interstate Commerce Law 4^>3 

sure that the Courant, at least, would not want the Senate 
to take hasty action on so important and complicated a 
subject as this legislation relative to the power of the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission over railroad rates. I think 
it is quite safe to say that there are very few if any Senators 
who would not be glad to do the right thing about it, and 
do it at this session. There ought to be no Senator who 
would be willing to do an ill-considered thing at this or 
any other session. 

Now, just see what the situation is. The House has 
had this matter under consideration the entire session 
until this time, when a bill is brought out of committee 
which neither the President nor the Committee is satisfied 
with, but it is a bill, and the House caucuses on it, and 
directs a rule to be brought in for its passage, denying the 
privilege of amendment, with three days for debate. Of 
course, the House is going to pass it and send it over to the 
Senate. 

The Swayne case has been sent over, and whatever the 
opinion may be about that, it must be tried with all the 
formahties and detail that would be if it were an impeach- 
ment of Judge Lacomb of New York. The House fooled 
with that all the session and the managers are ready at 
last to go to trial on the tenth day of February, wanting 
until the thirteenth, which we refused to agree to. This 
leaves just i8 working days in which to try that case, 
with 67 witnesses summoned; to pass the appropriation 
bills, only one of which has become a law, two being in 
conference, leaving ten unconsidered, and several of them 
yet unpassed by the House, together with all the other 
legislation which ought to be attended to. 

Now, do you think that we ought to just simply take 
that bill as it comes from the House and pass it without 
debate or consideration, or do you think that it would 
really be better to have the Committee consider this matter 
during the session, and get a bill that would be satisfac- 
tory to the President, to Congress, and fair to shippers, 



464 Orville H. Piatt 

railroads, and investors? Is it not too important a sub- 
ject to be disposed of in the way the House has disposed 
of it, and in the way the Senate will be obliged to dispose 
of it, if it is passed at this session? 

Writing again to Mr. Clark on February 13th, after 
the passage of the bill by the House, he said: 

The Senate does not balk ; it simply wants to do the right 
thing. I venture to say that while there were only seven- 
teen men in the House who voted against the so-called Rate 
bill, there were not seventeen men in the House of Repre- 
sentatives who were satisfied with it, and that the President 
himself is not satisfied with it. I can not reconcile it with 
my sense of duty, to pass a bill that everyone believes to be 
an imperfect method, at least, of effecting an object all 
practically desire to further, just because there is a senti- 
ment that something should be done — a sentiment with 
which I agree fully. I cannot legislate in that way. I 
must try to get things right before I support them — at any 
rate, from my standpoint, and in a matter of this tremen- 
dous importance, to simply pass that bill without dis- 
cussion or consideration would be, to my mind, a serious 
neglect of my duty as a Senator. If I did it, the people 
ought to ask me to come home. I think everyone under- 
stands that there is no opportunity to consider the bill — 
to amend it, or even discuss it. You do not want bills 
passed in that way in the Connecticut Legislature. 

I cannot help what people think about the Senate. The 
Senate is here to do its duty, and not to be swept off its 
feet by what people may think about it. This is too great 
a subject to play with, by which I mean that no man who 
respects himself and tries to do his duty, ought to vote for 
any measure in which he does not believe, or which does 
not satisfy him, because of public clamor directed toward 
him personally, or the Senate of which he is a member. 

This is the way I would talk to you if we were together 



The Interstate Commerce Law 465 

discussing the matter, and I believe that I could convince 
you that time ought to be given in the Senate to the con- 
sideration of this measure, and sufficient time to make it 
what it should be rather than what it is. 

He was saved the dreaded ordeal of passing upon 
the bill during that session of the Senate, and when 
the question again came before Congress his voice 
was silent forever. What would have been his course 
regarding the legislation of the following winter can 
only be conjectured. The sole intimation of his trend 
of thought appears in a letter which he wrote in January 
to the president of one of the great railway systems of 
the United States: 

There is great force in your suggestion as to additional 
legislation in the way of enlarging the powers of the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission, and I think, on first impres- 
sion, that it might be effectual. There seems to be a craze on 
this subject, especially in the West, and it looks as if some 
legislation would pass, not at this session — perhaps, at the 
next. The difficulty is to know what to do. I have been 
thinking about the matter, and have wondered how some- 
thing like this would be, namely: Give to the Commission 
power to hear complaints, and if they find that the rates 
complained of are unreasonable, to suggest what, in their 
judgment, would be reasonable rates in the case before 
them. The suggested rate, however, not to take effect 
until upon an appeal, taken by the railroad company to 
the Circuit Court in the circuit where the rate complained 
of is, and the decision of that Court that the rate is un- 
reasonable, and that the suggested rate of the Commission is 
a reasonable one, — upon such decision of the Court, the rate 
to take effect, such cases to be expedited by the Court as 
rapidly as practicable. Appeal to the Court of Appeals to 
be final unless certified to the Supreme Court of Errors. 

This is merely a crude suggestion, but it would do away 
30 



466 Orville H. Piatt 

with rate-making by the Commission, and would give the 
railroads an opportunity to get into court for final decision ; 
would do away with the proposed transportation court; 
would not provide for additional judges; proceeds upon the 
idea that such cases might be speedily heard by the present 
courts. 

Another suggestion is, that when the Commission might 
have declared a rate to be unreasonable, and decided that 
another was reasonable, that rate should not go into force 
for — say thirty or sixty days, — meanwhile, the railroad 
having the right to appeal and to apply to the Appellate 
Court for a stay or suspension, to be granted by the Court 
if, on a showing, it seemed proper, during the trial of 
the appeal. But, all these things have got to be threshed 
out, and I hope that we may be able to prevent any radical 
and injurious action. No one knows, however. 



CHAPTER XXXV 



A ROBUST AMERICAN 



Sturdily Assertive in International Affairs — The United States a 

World Power — Sustains Cleveland's Venezuelan Message — 

Arbitration with Great Britain — The Hague Treaties. 

IN all that concerns our relations to other Powers 
Senator Piatt was a robust American, not in the 
least a jingo — for his innate sense of dignity forbade 
it, — but one who believed to the core of his being that 
the United States had a great part to play among the 
nations, and that we should ever be prepared for what- 
ever glory the future might have in store. His atti- 
tude with regard to our occupation of the Philippines 
was typical of his attitude in all our dealings with 
foreign nations. " We are not in the Philippines " he 
said "as the result of premeditation; we are there 
by the logic of imperative necessity. " He felt that 
Dewey's guns sounded the call to national duty, awak- 
ing a great people to a sense of its obligation. We 
could never again feel that we had no interest in what 
was taking place in the world outside : 

There have always been great epochs in the world's 
history. I believe them to be the result of Divine Provi- 
dence, and I cannot help thinking that when the necessities 
of the Spanish War compelled the United States to plant 
its flag on the shores of Manila Bay, the very greatest 
epoch in the world's history began. ^ 

» The Independent, August 24, 1899. 

467 



468 Orville H. Piatt 

He realized that in our relations to other nations 
the universal rule of nature applied. We could not 
remain stationary. We must go forward or retreat. 
In our history we had never yet known what it was 
permanently to retreat; "it is our glory to have ad- 
vanced, and whenever we have advanced it has been to 
the great and lasting benefit of mankind. " He never 
conceived that our true poHcy was one of isolation. 
He had no obsession about the awful perils of foreign 
alliances.^ 

He held that to be a member of the family of nations 
conferred responsibility and created duties, that duty 



1 " Precisely how this notion of our supposed policy grew up it 
is perhaps difficult to explain. The sentences in "Washington's 
Farewell Address, and in Jefferson's Inaugural Message with refer- 
ence to alliances with European nations have doubtless been 
relied on as establishing such a policy for this Government. Neither 
of these utterances proclaimed the indifference of the United 
States as to what might take place in the world, or can be justly 
cited as authority for the doctrine that we should in no way take 
part in such affairs. Washington cautioned us to avoid 'per- 
manent aUiances. ' Jefferson advised us to 'cultivate peace, 
commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling 
alliances with none,' but this was very far from the assertion 
that we had no concern in what might be going on between the 
nations of the Old World, nor was it so understood even in those 
early days. It was permanent and entangling alliances which 
were to be feared and shunned, and there could never have been 
a purpose on the part of Washington or Jefferson to say that our 
interests were to be neglected, or that as one of the nations of the 
world we were to have no concern as to what other nations might 
do either in derogation of those interests or affecting the advance- 
ment and happiness of mankind. 

"A nation has no right to live to itself alone. To assert such a 
right is to contend for the doctrine that selfishness is right. Self- 
ishness in a nation is as much worse than selfishness in the in- 
dividual as the nation is stronger and more influential than the 
individual." — Speech at the annual dinner of the New Haven Bar 
Association, Jan. 22, 1903. 



A Robust American 469 

corresponded with ability and power. When the 
United States was weak among nations its people felt 
that its duties were circumscribed by its boundaries. 
Upon the ground of incapacity our indifference might 
have been excusable. We had asked to be let alone, 
and we were let alone, so much so that we were scarcely 
recognized as one of the family of nations, but as we 
grew in strength and came to realize that we ought in all 
fairness to be consulted, the situation became galling: 
" I know of nothing in connection with our national 
affairs which stirred me more in my early life than the 
contemptuous indifference with which we were treated 
by the nations which considered themselves the Great 
Powers of the world, " but : 

Things change with lightning-like rapidity in the world; 
the time came when we realized that we had out-grown 
the clothes of childhood, and having arrived at full-grown 
manhood we should assume its duties. With growth came 
strength and the power as well as the inclination to dis- 
charge duty. The world did not know this — we did. 
While we had grown to have a giant's strength, the world 
still thought of and treated us as but a weakling. But 
opportunity came at last. The Powers had overlooked the 
fact that we had a navy, or, if they knew it, thought only 
that our ships were for show until one morning in 1898, as 
the daylight revealed the city of Manila and the shores 
of Manila Bay, Dewey's guns waked the world to a realiza- 
tion of the fact that the United States was thenceforth to 
be a power in the world, to be heeded and if necessary to 
be reckoned with. From that moment all was changed. 
From that hour we were not only invited to the family 
table of nations, but to take our seat at the head of the table, 
and, whether seated at the head or elsewhere about the 
board, there came true the old saying: "Where McGregor 
sits, there is the head of the table." We have thus come to 



470 Orville H. Piatt 

our own at last. We have found our true international 
position and it has been fully recognized. 

We have seen how he approved the acquisition of 
Hawaii, and how he criticised the Cleveland administra- 
tion for the restoration of Queen Lil to her comic 
throne. His feeling about the importance of our rela- 
tions to the Sandwich Islands dated back to the time 
when the white inhabitants overthrew the native 
dynasty and appealed for annexation to the United 
States. " I think I understand the situation some- 
what, " he wrote in March, 1889 : 

It is perfectly evident even to an inexperienced observer 
that England is trying to obtain supremacy in the Sand- 
wich Islands, France in Hayti, and Germany in Samoa; 
each of these three points being places in which it is es- 
sential that no foreign power should obtain influence 
superior to that of the United States. It does not require 
much prophetic vision to see that whatever diplomatic 
relations we are to have with England during the next 
four years will be complicated with the Sandwich Islands; 
and I can easily understand the wish of Mr. Blaine to have 
some one skilled in diplomacy and international law at 
the Sandwich Islands. I shall be surprised if the next 
four years does not develop a situation which will call for 
the exercise of the highest talent and the soundest judgment 
on the part of whoever may be Minister at that place. ^ 

In December, 1895, President Cleveland stirred the 
country with his Venezuelan message asking Congress 
to authorize a commission to determine the true divi- 
sional line between the republic of Venezuela and Bri- 
tish Guiana. This challenge to Great Britain, with its 
sturdy Americanism and its demoralizing influence 
upon stocks, shocked the sensibilities of some of Mr. 

1 Letter to M. M. Gower, March 26, 1889. 



A Robust American 471 

Cleveland's former idolaters, but it commanded the 
endorsement of many of his political adversaries. 
Mr. Piatt, although opposed to Cleveland at almost 
every point of public policy, advocated the speediest 
possible action on the bill carrying the necessary 
authorization. He opposed any amendment of the 
bill which had already passed the House : 

The question arises whether Great Britain is attempting 
unfairly to extend her sovereignty and authority in Ven- 
ezuela. The message of the President states the policy of 
the American people on this subject very clearly and very 
vigorously. . . . Any amendment made in the Senate 
will be construed in England as a hesitation on the part 
of the Senate to sustain the President in the position he 
has taken. . . . The bill now contains all that the Presi- 
dent of the United States asks of us. And it is the Presi- 
dent of the United States who asks this of Congress. It 
is not as an individual who occupies the executive chair 
that he has addressed us, but he speaks in the official 
capacity as the President of the country, and in this matter 
what he says should be treated as the utterance of the 
President of the United States. 

"With regard to Venezuela, I did the only thing 
possible, " he wrote while the affair was still fresh 
in the public mind, " which was to favor the appoint- 
ment of the commission, and though my action was 
not quite popular, I think the country is beginning 
to see that the commission was the only way out of 
the difficulty."! 

And on the heels of the President's warlike message 
he wrote to former Congressman John R. Buck of 
Hartford : 

I Letter to George L. Cheney, March 14, 1895. 



472 Orville H. Piatt 

I got your letter of the first or second instant and I 
send you to-day the message and correspondence between 
Olney and Lord Sahsbury and also a record containing 
Mr. Lodge's speech. I hope you will read it carefully. 
I am rather surprised to know that you could flay Olney, 
for I think his dispatch to Lord Sahsbury is a pretty 
temperate statement of the case. I do not know whether 
we disagree radically or in non-essentials. I object to 
England or any other foreign power getting a foothold 
on the western continent or, if already here, extending 
its possessions here. I think the United States ought to 
interfere whenever either is attempted. Do you hold that 
it is nothing to the United States, that we ought not to 
object to colonization by foreign powers or the unjust and 
ruthless extension of foreign colonial institutions here? 
If so, we disagree radically; if not, it is only a question of 
propriety and of making our position known. But this 
is getting to be ancient history here and few suppose that 
in the Venezuelan matter such a case of wilful aggression 
is to be made out as to require the interference of the United 
States upon the principles I have laid down. 

Thus believing that his country was to be a constant 
factor in great world problems ; that our destiny decreed 
our territorial growth ; that the Monroe Doctrine was a 
practical, working theory, he consistently upheld all 
measures needed to equip us for the important part 
in the international drama which we were bound to 
play. He supported appropriations for an adequate 
navy, and sustained the McKinley and Roosevelt 
administrations in their plans for an efficient army. 
He was not niggardly when it came to maintaining 
our representatives abroad in a style befitting a first- 
class Power. He was one to whom every President 
could look for support in policies intended to insure 
the dignity of the United States among the nations, 



A Robust American 473 

for his first impulse always was to sustain any Executive 
engaged in upholding the American side of an inter- 
national argument. In the last days of the Cleveland 
administration an arbitration treaty with Great Bri- 
tain was negotiated. He was for ratifying it, if a 
way could properly be found to do so, yet he would not 
act hastily; for there were questions which the Senate 
as a part of the treaty-making power might well con- 
sider with great care. " I cannot think " he said to one 
who urged speedy action after the treaty had gone to 
the Senate, " that there are any political considerations, 
speaking in the sense of partisan politics, which affect 
the ratification of the arbitration treaty " : 

It is a great treaty, it is to be far-reaching in its results, 
and it should be carefully considered, and I think that is 
the disposition with which it has been received. I do not 
know of any opposition to the principle of arbitration. 
There are some questions which arise as to what subjects 
will necessarily, under the consideration of the treaty, be 
submitted to arbitration, and I think you will agree that 
there should be very careful examination to determine 
that. So far as I am at present advised, I don't see serious 
objection to the form and language. I am a little surprised 
at the ambiguity of some of the expressions. 

Striving with all his might to reach a conclusion, 
the righteousness of which the future would sustain, 
it was no wonder if he lost patience with the self -con- 
stituted custodians of the general welfare who tor- 
mented him and other Senators with importunate 
demands for immediate compliance with the Executive 
will. To one of these he wrote : 

I beg to assure you that if the public believes what you 
say it does believe with reference to the motives of Sena- 



474 Orville H. Piatt 

tors with regard to the arbitration treaty it, in my judg- 
ment, believes in what is not true and which there is no 
reason to beHeve is true. If the people will attribute 
improper and unworthy motives to Senators it is unfortu- 
nate, but probably cannot be helped. The principle of 
arbitration upon which the treaty is founded is as dear, 
I think, to us as I think it is to you. That there are serious 
difficulties in the way of this particular treaty is not to be 
disguised. I presume that when a vote is reached the moral 
considerations will prevail in my mind and lead me to 
vote for the treaty as it is, but I cannot shut my eyes to 
the fact that it is quite possible, and more than probable, 
that even within the next five years, to which it is limited, 
circumstances might arise and interests of the United 
States suffer in a way which would bring more condemna- 
tion to us than we are now receiving because we are not 
acting in haste. Let me suggest to you whether it would 
not be well to consider that Senators are quite likely after 
all to act from honest motives and under a sense of great 
responsibility. 

One of the reasons which made him pause was a deep- 
seated distrust of England's intentions, and this feel- 
ing he expressed in a reply to an inquiry addressed to 
him by the editors of the Outlook as to the necessity 
for the Senate's delay: 

Take the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, now fifty years old, 
the reasons for which, owing to changed conditions, are 
practically at an end, which Mr. Frelinghuysen notified Eng- 
land we were no longer bound to observe, but which Mr. 
Blaine subsequently acknowledged. It is now insisted on, 
we believe, on the part of England to prevent the American 
Government from either building the Nicaragua Canal or 
assisting an American company to build it. The pretences 
of England to territory as recognized by that treaty have 
been persistently and greatly enlarged. We believe, 



A Robust American 475 

whether rightly or not, that Enghsh diplomacy is constantly 
exerted to prevent the building of the canal. All this is 
done in a way very difficult to detect, and the evidence of 
which is indirect, the results furnishing the best indication 
of her intrigue. Now in a matter as important as this is, 
is it wise to submit a " difference " which England may claim 
to arbitration? Why is it wise to submit to arbitration 
every possible claim which England may make with regard 
to the extensions of her territory in this hemisphere, when 
for more than fifty years we have been denying as a matter 
of national policy her right to make any extension whatever? 
The truth is, and we may as well look it in the face, that Eng- 
land is a preposterous claimant everywhere in the world, 
going just as far with her claims for territorial extensions 
and commercial aggrandizement as she dare to go without 
encountering forcible opposition. Her diplomatic his- 
tory has been one of continual aggression, both in this coun- 
try and everywhere else. Is it not fair to suppose that 
when once it is provided that all "differences" shall be 
submitted to arbitration, her claims will be indefinitely 
"enlarged"? When she no longer feels they are to be re- 
sisted, those who have been careful students of her poHcy 
cannot but anticipate that new claims very aggravating in 
their character will be put forth for the very purpose of being 
submitted to arbitration in the hope that through her great 
influence and, if the word does not shock you, chicanery, 
she may get some of her claims allowed. We have had 
a great many arbitrations with Great Britain. In every 
instance but one, that of the Geneva award, we have got 
the worst of it, and I think that since then she has more 
than wiped out by arbitrations the advantage that we 
gained by that award. We are a self-contained people 
unless the present or "jingo" sentiment is to prevail. 
We do not seek extension or aggrandizement. We shall 
never do so with the expectation of settling our claims 
by arbitration. All our knowledge of Great Britain leads 
us to suppose and to beUeve that she will. We think that 



476 Orville H. Piatt 

we can see many directions in which the moment this 
treaty is ratified she will begin to push claims which have 
lain comparatively dormant because she felt that the 
United States would not submit to their being pushed. 

If you have ever lived in the country, you will remember 
in the town where you resided some man who was over- 
reaching, known to be contentious, setting up preposterous 
claims with his neighbors, ready to assert them by physical 
methods or by lawsuits, ingenious in insisting upon shadowy 
and doubtful rights until he was really the terror of his 
neighbors. I don't think that the proposition of such a 
man to submit all "differences" which he might have with 
anyone for five years to arbitration would have been looked 
upon with the utmost favor. The people who knew him 
would be very suspicious of a multiplication of "differ- 
ences," especially when it was quite doubtful as to whom 
the person selecting the arbitrators would desire to favor, 
or whether that person was far-sighted enough to foresee 
any bias which might exist in the minds of the deciding 
arbitrator whom he might select. 

Such suggestions as these cannot but find a place in the 
minds of those who have been careful students and ob- 
servers of the policy pursued by Great Britain. And having 
said this, I turn to the other side of the question and say, 
that probably the benefit established of the principle of a 
peaceable settlement of national differences will, in my 
mind, outweigh the objections which present themselves 
to me sufficiently to secure my vote for the treaty without 
amendment unless we can have a pretty good understanding 
that some amendments would be acceded to by Great Britain. 
But it is not a question which should be met and decided 
in blind haste. A Senator is just as responsible for this 
treaty as the President is, and must approach the question 
of its ratification in the same spirit as he would the question 
of its negotiation in the first instance, and proceed with the 
same deliberation. It is one of those questions where there 
ought to be no jumping at conclusions. And I want in 



A Robust American 477 

conclusion to say that I do not believe that this treaty is 
being considered by Senators from a partisan standpoint, 
but just from the standpoint of the President and Mr. 
Olney during the year which they have been trying to 
arrange its details and terms. 

To another correspondent^ with whom he had been 
in frank communication, he explained in a little differ- 
ent way, the considerations which influenced him in 
weighing carefully the provisions of the treaty : 

I should probably let the benefits to be derived from the 
ratification of any treaty outweigh my fears, and should 
have voted for the treaty as a whole without amendment 
if that had been thought best by the Foreign Relations 
Committee. At the same time, we who know England 
and English policy cannot help having fears that some 
interests of the United States may be put in jeopardy by 
the treaty of arbitration, in a way and to an extent which 
would make those who are now most desirous that it 
should be ratified extremely serious. Even Mr. Edmunds, 
who has been a consistent and able advocate of the treaty, 
can only answer those fears by saying that the matters in 
which our interests would be Hkely to be endangered 
would not come within the jurisdiction of arbitration, and 
he may be right in respect to that, but jurisdiction would 
certainly be claimed with reference to matters growing 
out of or dependent upon the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 
and if we deny jurisdiction and succeeded in preventing 
those matters from coming to arbitration, we should be 
put in the position of having, by technical plea, avoided 
the principle of the treaty. 

During the Roosevelt administration the question 
of arbitration again came before the Senate — first 
through a treaty which Secretary Hay negotiated with 

1 Professor Waldo G. Pratt of the Hartford Theological Seminary. 



478 Orville H. Piatt 

Great Britain, and later through treaties supplemental 
to the Hague Convention of 1899, intended to render 
effective the provisions of that Convention dealing 
with "the permanent court of arbitration." In both 
instances the Senate was disposed to cling to its pre- 
rogatives as a constitutional part of the treaty-making 
power. As for the treaty with Great Britain, there was 
a serious question about the advisability of entering 
into a general arbitration agreement at a time when 
matters affecting the Isthmian Canal were likely to 
come up in which Great Britain might enter obnoxious 
claims. As in the case of the earlier treaty negotiated 
by Secretary Olney, Mr. Piatt was for going slow. 
" Every time we come to a question of arbitration " 
he wrote in February, 1904, to Lynde Harrison of 
New Haven, a supporter of the treaty, "the matter 
seems to be one that we can not well arbitrate " : 

For instance, — the anti-Panama people are now ser- 
iously proposing (and it is about all there is left of the 
anti-Panama sentiment) that we should enter into a treaty 
with Colombia to pay her some $10,000,000 upon the theory 
that she has a grievance, and that we ought to pay her 
for the sake of quiet and good feeling. Of course, this 
proposition rests upon the assumption that Colombia 
thinks that we have done something wrong. I would not 
like to submit to arbitration on any such question as that 
at the present stage of the Panama matter. True, it 
might be said that if Colombia has no real claim against 
us, we would not be hurt by agreeing that she might present 
whatever she had or thought she had, and have the ques- 
tion arbitrated, and yet, it seems unwise and unnecessary 
to submit a perfectly absurd contention to arbitration. I 
merely speak of this to show that there is all the time be- 
fore the Senate some concrete proposition for arbitration 
which seems to be inadmissible. 



A Robust American 479 

The Hague treaties were held a long time in the 
Senate, a majority there contending that a general 
treaty could not properly be made giving to the Exe- 
cutive discretion in entering into agreements with 
foreign powers regarding certain matters in dispute, 
but that each separate agreement must be subject to 
ratification by the Senate. Mr. Piatt during the 
session of 1904-5 was occupied with his duties as 
presiding officer of the Swayne impeachment case. 
He was ill much of the time and in no condition to 
undertake exacting tasks, yet he was concerned about 
the treaties and anxious if possible to come to the assis- 
tance of the administration. When the question came 
before the Senate as to accepting the amendment pro- 
posed by the Committee on Foreign Relations substi- 
tuting the word "treaty" for the word "agreement," 
he voted with the small minority against the amend- 
ment, but made no record of the reasons for his vote. 
Realizing that the position of the administration ought 
to be fully stated, ill though he was, he felt impelled 
to prepare himself to argue the administration's case 
against the majority of his associates, and he dictated 
from his sick bed the following letter to Secretary Hay 
which he sent by a special messenger to the State 
Department to be placed in Mr. Hay's own hands : 

Dear Mr. Secretary: 

I would like to be able to take your side of the argument 
about the treaties, and am inclined that way, but I have a 
little touch of the grip. I get out long enough to go up 
to the Senate each day to preside at the impeachment 
trial, after which I come home and the rest of the time 
am in bed. 

I write this to say that I think that inasmuch as the 
Committee on Foreign Relations proposes to make an 



48o Orville H. Piatt 

argument, according to the newspapers, sustaining the Com- 
mittee's side of the question, it would be well if the Depart- 
ment of State could, in a way, furnish a brief, outHning 
its views. If I can come to the same conclusion that the 
Department of State does, I would like to argue it. 

Putting the proposition into concrete form, — I under- 
stand that the Department of State claims that the Presi- 
dent, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
may make a treaty binding upon our Government and the 
Senate alike, to submit a certain class of disputes which 
cannot be adjusted by diplomacy, to the Hague tribunal 
for arbitration, authorizing the President to determine 
whether a particular controversy which may arise falls 
within the class which, by the treaty, it is agreed shall be 
submitted to that tribunal, and to arrange the method and 
rules of submission; that the Senate denies this, holding 
that no question of difference can be submitted even 
after such a treaty has been made, except by a new treaty 
negotiated by the President and ratified by the Senate. In 
other words, that the United States, by reason of its 
Constitution, can not enter into a general arbitration 
treaty; that the most it can do is to promise that, if differ- 
ences arise which can not be settled by diplomacy, it will 
endeavor to negotiate a treaty, which, if ratified by the 
Senate, will permit the particular difference to be submitted. 

With this grip cold which I have, and all my other work, 
I cannot go to the bottom of this subject, either argumen- 
tatively or on precedent, but it looks as if it is going to 
reach a point where I must take a position in the matter, 
and I would like you to help me out if you can. 

Yours truly, 

O. H. Platt. 

Honorable John Hay, 
Secretary of State. 

He seems not to have been quite satisfied with the 
pleadings on either side. With the Senate's contention 



A Robust American 481 

he had little sympathy. He thought the body to 
which he belonged was getting altogether too critical. 
" I would stand as stoutly as anyone against any en- 
croachment upon the prerogatives of the Senate, or 
against any unlawful or unauthorized action by the 
Executive, " he wrote Judge George Gray: 

But it does not do the Senate or the country any good 
to be continually looking to see if in some unimportant 
particular the Executive has not gone too far. I have 
known people so jealous of their own rights, and so fearful 
of interference therewith that they made their whole lives 
miserable, forfeiting the respect of everyone who knew 
them. I feel that the Senate is acting like such individuals. 

At the same time he was unable to get from the 
administration a conclusive statement of its position, 
and one of the last letters he ever wrote on the subject 
was in the nature of an argument with himself^ : 

I think that you understand that I voted against the 
amendment of the arbitration treaty, substituting the word 
"treaty" for the word "agreement." I do not think that 
the question has been intelligently stated yet, either by 
the President or by the Senate. It may be stated in this 
way: 

Can the President by and with the advice and consent 
of the Senate, make a general arbitration treaty with an- 
other power, by which all disputes of a certain class arising 
hereafter shall be referred to the Hague tribunal, the 
President determining whether the particular matter aris- 
ing falls within the class contemplated by the treaty, and 
how the necessary agreement in order to have the dispute 
properly presented to the Hague tribunal shall be made, 
as well as by whom, or, must the Senate be consulted and 
take part in the submission of every case which may here- 

J Letter to S. E. Chaffee, Derby, Connecticut, February 21, 1905. 
31 



482 Orville H. Piatt 

after arise, thus taking part in the determination whether 
the case falls within the class of controversies to be sub- 
mitted to that tribunal. In other words, can the President 
and Senate now, in the exercise of the treaty-making power, 
provide that cases which afterwards arise of a certain class 
or nature, shall be submitted without further treaty agree- 
ment, to the tribunal? 

It is a close question which would require a long time for 
me to argue, but I incline to the view that the President 
is right and the Senate wrong about the matter. There is 
no quarrel — no controversy. Either side of the question 
may be honestly taken, and is honestly taken. If the Presi- 
dent is right, there may be a general arbitration treaty. 
If the Senate is right, there can not be, and every dispute 
arising must be the subject of a special treaty. It all 
hinges on the words of the Constitution, that "the Presi- 
dent may, with the advice and consent of the Senate, 
make treaties." 

His service came to an end with the question still 
pending, but there can be no doubt about what would 
have been his course. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 



THE PANAMA AFFAIR 



Always for the Canal — A New Republic on the Isthmus — Defender 

of the Administration — Speech of January 20-21, 1904 — 

The "Yale Protest." 

NO one in any way familiar with his record and 
character should have supposed that when it 
came to the point of deciding whether to build the 
Isthmian Canal he would be found temporizing or 
weaving fanciful objections to the only practical method 
of entering on the work; yet in the fruitful days of the 
fall of 1903, when the hour struck to end at last the 
years of weary waiting and Mr. Piatt aligned himself 
by President Roosevelt's side, there were some who 
grieved for him as for a lost leader. The building of 
the canal had been a project close to his heart for many 
years. Almost his first official act in the Senate had 
been the introduction of a joint resolution inviting 
the co-operation of the nations of Europe in the selec- 
tion of a route forthe transit of ships across the Isthmus, 
and through all the intervening years he had never let 
himself be lured away from the real point at issue by 
futile discussion as to whether the canal should be built 
in one place or another. When, under the lead of Mark 
Hanna, Congress at last expressed its preference for 
the Panama route, he gladly gave his assent, and when 
a little later President Roosevelt, refusing longer to be 

483 



484 Ondlle H. Piatt 

held in contempt by Colombia, made terms with the 
newly created state of Panama, he gave the administra- 
tion his prompt and hearty support. It seemed to 
him the natural and logical sequence of events that, 
when Colombia undertook to hold up the United States 
in exacting an unreasonable price for its rights in the 
Isthmus, the people of Panama, who were most vitally 
interested in the construction of the canal, should throw 
off an authority which had long been odious and thus 
clear the way for beginning the work. It was equally 
natural that the United States should recognize the 
de facto government thus created. "I do not see 
how it was possible to do anything different than was 
done in the matter of the Panama revolution " he 
wrote shortly after the event : 

We were under treaty obligations with New Granada, 
which obligations ran to Colombia after the government 
of New Granada was wiped out by revolution, and which 
of course now runs to Panama if it establishes its inde- 
pendence, to keep open the transit of the Panama railroad. 
Of course it is for our interest to have this done. It would 
really be our duty if there were no treaty requiring us to 
do it, consequently our action in that respect can not 
be criticised, I think. There is no evidence that our 
Government has done anything to encourage a revolution 
there — on the contrary, it is, I think, susceptible of proof 
that it has not — still, those who have been familiar with 
the situation have felt that it might occur and our Govern- 
ment has been watching the matter, ready to keep open 
the Panama railroad and protect the interests of American 
citizens there. There was a revolution, and I am sure 
we did nothing more than we ought to have done when it 
occurred. Then, the provisional government established 
appointed an agent to represent their interests, and our 
government received that agent, stating the facts and say- 



The Panama Affair 485 

ing that it appeared that there was a unanimous acquies- 
cence on the part of the people of Panama to estabUsh 
a government for themselves. This was not a formal 
recognition of the independence of the new government 
of Panama. We could scarcely refuse to listen to a man 
appointed as the representative of the inchoate govern- 
ment. The question of whether there will be a formal 
recognition of Panama as an independent government 
will come later, and if a government is established there, 
with a constitution, a president and legislature which 
seem able to maintain its existence, of course our whole 
policy in such matters would require the recognition of 
its independence. All we have done now, as it seems to 
me, is to recognize the fact that by a revolution there is 
a de facto government set up there. Whether the full 
recognition of this government will come must depend upon 
the future. The truth of the matter is, I suspect, that 
Colombia undertook to hold up the United States, demand- 
ing more money for the concession of canal rights than it 
should, and that Panama being aggrieved in that respect, 
desiring the canal and feeHng that it had been unjustly 
treated, decided to sever its relations with the Colombian 
Government. Now, I am informed, the government of 
Colombia expresses its entire wilhngness to ratify the 
treaty, but it seems to be too late. If Panama succeeds 
in the establishment of a stable constitutional government, 
and sends a minister here, I see no grounds upon which he 
should be rejected. You spoke of haste, but after all, 
I do not see that any undue haste has been exercised. 
Revolutions in South American countries are hasty affairs 
anyway, and where we have interests we must find some 
one to deal with for the protection of those interests.^ 

Such a cry as went up from the throats of the vice- 
gerents of the Almighty had not been heard in all the 
years since it was decided to retain the Philippines. 

I Letter to W. F. Osborne, November ii, 1903. 



486 Orville H. Piatt 

President Roosevelt was assailed with a ferocity before 
which a weaker Executive might have quailed, and 
Senator Piatt came in for his share of the vituperation. 
There was a little group in New Haven who deplored 
his course, but by whom owing to past relations he 
could be treated only with respect. Chief among them 
was Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth who early undertook a 
crusade against the Panama policy of the administra- 
tion. He wrote to Mr. Piatt asking for certain docu- 
ments with which to fortify himself and added : 

" I meet with little but an expression of amazement 
and reprobation concerning the high-handed action of 
the President." 

Mr. Piatt promptly sent the documents with the 
comment : 

" So far as I know here the President's course meets 
with quite universal approval," and later he wrote: 

I may say that I do not agree with you at all in your 
views of the Panama situation. I think, if our Government 
had done anything different from what it did, there would 
have been a storm of indignation throughout the country 
and justly so. 

After the treaty with Panama had been submitted to 
the Senate, the New Haven group prepared a petition 
praying for its rejection, and forwarded it to Senator 
Hoar. Because the names of a few Yale professors 
were signed to the petition it was styled the "Yale 
Protest," greatly to the disgust of other members of 
the Yale faculty who were anything but sympathetic 
with the move. Mr. Piatt immediately was flooded 
with letters from New Haven disclaiming the right of 
the petitioners to speak for any except themselves. 
"In New Haven," wrote a prominent physician, "it 




ORVILLE H. PLATT 



The Panama Affair 487 

is a laughing matter. There is n't a good RcpiibHcan 
in the city who condemns the action in Panama." 
Some wanted him to ask the Senate to refuse to re- 
ceive the petition. To these he repHed that he doubted 
whether it was worth while for him to dignify it by 
any particular notice. To one he wrote : 

Of course I would not consider the New Haven petition 
a matter requiring any notice on my part in the Senate or 
anywhere else. The Democrats in the Senate are by no 
means a unit against the treaty and the action of the 
President in recognizing the new state of Panama. The 
attack on the President is an attempt to force the building 
of the canal on the Nicaraguan route, rather than the 
expression of actual belief that he has done anything 
worthy of condemnation. 

Judge W. K. Townsend, of the United States Circuit 
Court, a member of the Yale faculty of law was con- 
strained to write him: 

I wish I could convey to you some idea of the feeling 
in this community and among the Yale professors in 
regard to that Panama petition. Professor George P. 
Fisher, than whom no man here is more eminent for learn- 
ing and ability called on me to deplore the false position 
in which Yale has been placed by this ill-timed, unjustified 
movement and the discourtesy to you. Professors Louns- 
bury and Day and Brewer have expressed themselves very 
forcibly on the subject. ... Dr. Fisher agreed to write 
to Secretary Hay and I agreed to write to the President. 
But it has occurred to me that as there may be some legal 
compHcations growing out of the matter perhaps it is 
enough and better to say confidentially to you that I 
with other Yale professors, several of whom were ap- 
proached and refused to be parties to any such perform- 
ance, feel that President Roosevelt and you ought to 
know that we have implicit faith in his and your honor and 



488 Orville H. Piatt 

integrity and love of justice and in the wisdom and ability 
of his experienced counselors and that we are utterly 
opposed to said movement and to the spirit which prompted 
it. 

As an offset to the "Yale Protest" a second petition 
was prepared and forwarded to Senator Piatt praying 
for the ratification of the treaty. It was signed by 
representative business men of New Haven and by a 
large number of professors of Yale University, of at 
least equal standing with those whose signatures were 
affixed to the first paper. The member of the faculty 
who circulated the petition among his associates re- 
ported that those he approached expressed feelings 
of indignation or disgust as the case might be that the 
early petition was so conspicuously announced as voic- 
ing Yale sentiment. To him the Senator responded: 

I cannot help thinking that the first petition stirred 
up more feeling in New Haven than anywhere else. I 
think it has fallen pretty flat here. I am sure Senators 
know quite well by reputation the gentlemen who signed 
it and regard them as professional critics. . . . The 
opponents of the President have lost ground in the Senate 
ever since their attack upon him. . . . Mr. Gorman 
has lost prestige and he and his followers have really 
descended now to the position of saying that they believe 
the President has not been honest, but has been guilty of 
duplicity and concealment. They can make no headway 
upon such a charge, and the longer they persist in it the 
less support they will have in the country. 

He did not confine himself to thus making clear 
his position among his correspondents at home. On 
January 20, 1904, he began a speech in the Senate 
in support of the administration which occupied a part 



The Panama Affair 489 

of two days in delivery and which was a comprehensive 
defence of all that had been done. 

The debate turned not upon the ratification of the 
treaty with Panama, but upon a resolution introduced 
by Mr. Gorman, "calling upon the President for certain 
information touching former negotiations of the United 
States with the government of New Granada or Colom- 
bia, " thus throwing into the open Senate arguments 
which otherwise must have been consigned to the quasi- 
secretiveness of executive sessions. Mr. Piatt gave 
his unqualified approval to every act of the President 
in connection with the Panama affair. He denounced 
the course of the Democratic minority in assailing the 
President's honesty and good faith. He called atten- 
tion to the fact, almost overlooked in the discussion, 
that a new nation had been established as capable of 
dealing with the other nations of the world as Great 
Britain, Germany, France, or Russia. If we had 
violated the principles of international law in the re- 
cognition of that state, and thereby assisted it to take 
its place among the nations of the world, then at least 
twenty other governments of the world had violated 
all the canons of international law : 

It is a fact that the state called the " Republic of Panama" 
exists, and that we can enter into relations with it and it 
can enter into relations with us, and that nothing can change 
that fact or deprive that state of the power to enter into 
relations with us, or us to enter into relations with it 
except force, war, conquest. 

That state had negotiated with the United States a 
treaty giving to the United States the right to con- 
struct a canal across its territory, and the ratification 
of that treaty without amendment would be the end 



490 Orville H. Piatt 

of the long weary controversy for the building of a 
canal. 

He asked those who were opposed to the treaty 
what they were going to do with this fact and this 
condition : 

Will they vote against the ratification of the treaty 
because they think perhaps there was haste in its nego- 
tiation; because, against the word of the President of the 
United States they still think that in some way or other 
the President was in complicity with the revolution which 
created the state of Panama, ... or for any of the other 
reasons which have been discussed here? Will they vote 
against the treaty except for the very reason avowed by the 
Senator from Colorado (Mr. Patterson) that he proposes 
to prevent if possible, the building of this canal across 
the Isthmus of Panama, so that it may be built across 
Nicaragua? 

He denied that this Government had committed any 
act of war or had intervened as between Colombia and 
Panama. If it were not for the supposed necessities 
of political parties the claim would never have been 
made that this country had no right to protect the 
lives and property of American citizens on the Isthmus 
of Darien and to keep open the connection by rail over 
the Isthmus from ocean to ocean : 

I claim that we had that right independent of any 
treaty. Much more did we have it with a treaty, the 
Treaty of 1846. Further than that I claim if the treaty 
had not confirmed us in this right, we would have had that 
right under the conditions existing outside the treaty 
which have arisen with reference to inter-communication 
between the oceans across that Isthmus. 

We knew, as everybody knew, that there was to be 
a revolution, and having had experience we knew more 



The Panama Affair 491 

— what revolutions on the Isthmus of Panama were — 
that they meant fighting without the observance of 
the rules of civilized war, that it meant death to Ameri- 
cans, that it meant the destruction of American pro- 
perty, that it meant the shutting up of the passageway 
over the Isthmus between the oceans : 

I say primarily, without any treaty and without any 
question of a canal, this Government was justified in sending 
a naval force there to protect our interests, and more than 
that to protect the interests of the whole world in that 
transit. It would have been recreant to its duty if it 
had not done it, and the outcry we now hear against the 
Government for having done it would be but an evening 
zephyr compared with the cyclone of denunciation that 
we would have heard from the other side of the chamber 
if it had not been done. 

Except for the political necessities of the case the 
question never would have been raised. In former 
years the action of our marines on the Isthmus had 
prevented the people of Panama from accomplishing 
their independence: 

If as an incident, they were now enabled to secure their 
independence because we would not permit that transit 
to be interrupted, that was their good fortune, as it was 
the good fortune of Colombia that in previous years while 
protecting the Isthmus we had prevented the Panamanians 
from accomphshing their independence. 

To those who were shocked by what they called the 
violation of the principles of international law, he 
directed the query: "How are the principles and canons 
of international law laid down?" and he answered his 
own question : 



492 Orville H. Piatt 

By the concensus of the powers of the world as to what 
is just and right and honorable as between nations, as the 
statute law determines what is just and right and honorable 
between individuals. 

After eighteen or twenty nations had looked into 
the case and in recognizing the new republic of Panama 
had said such recognition was justifiable, right and 
moral, it did not lie in the mouths of Senators to say 
that any principle of international law had been vio- 
lated. " If there was no precedent for it before, that 
precedent has now been written into the international 
law of the world": 

It was a great act, Mr. President. It was an act which, 
for all time to come, must affect, and affect, I believe, 
most beneficially, the United States of America. The 
President was equal to the occasion. Brave and fearless 
as he is, but neither rash nor impetuous, he did the right 
thing at the right time; the thing which will insure the 
building of that canal, so long delayed; the thing which 
will contribute to the future prosperity of this country. 

Mr. President, no great executive act of any President 
which contributed to the growth and glory of this country 
has ever been performed without a violent, vicious, vi- 
tuperative attack upon the President who performed it. 
From the days of George Washington to the days of 
Theodore Roosevelt, whenever any President has had the 
courage to do what he ought to do in reference to foreign 
countries he has been assailed as the present Executive 
is assailed. The Jay treaty, the Louisiana purchase, the 
Florida purchase or settlement, the acquisition of the 
Philippines, all have called down upon the heads of 
the Presidents who have taken the responsibility and done 
those great acts the coarsest calumny, the most unsparing 
vituperation. 

But, Mr. President, as time goes on and the benefits of 



The Panama Affair 493 

the act are discovered criticism fades away; the abuse is 
forgotten except as it is regretted; the act stands out to 
the glory of the President who performed it. 

Mr. President, the hope of the nations, the dream of the 
ages, is about to be reaHzed. We will ratify this treaty; 
we will build the canal; and when the ships of the whole 
earth, with their great cargoes, are passing through it, 
these criticisms, these attacks, these vituperations will be 
forgotten; and whatever President Roosevelt has done 
during this administration or may do in any future one, 
this act of his will stand forth before the world as the great- 
est act of his administration, the act which has conferred 
more benefit upon the United States and the world than 
any other act which he could be called upon to perform. 

The response from home to this appeal was generous 
and inspiring. " In these times of great and difficult 
national questions," wrote a Yale professor, " it isneces- 
sary that there should be steady and clear heads in 
Congress and it is good to think that there are such, " 
and similar expressions came from the leading men of 
the State, Democrats among the number. When Hoar 
presented the misnamed "Yale Protest," Piatt fol- 
lowed immediately with the New Haven petition as a 
response. 1 The treaty was ratified, and the great work 
of canal construction was ready to begin. 

• Mr. Piatt's personal relations with the Yale Faculty were al- 
ways cordial. In 1887 the University conferred upon him the de- 
gree of LL.D. At the Two Hundredth Anniversary Celebration in 
October, 1 901, when he was an honored guest with President Roose- 
velt, Governor McLean, Marquise Ito, and scholars representing 
American and European institutions of learning, he made a force- 
ful address commending Yale's earnest purpose, noble aspiration, 
and intense energy. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

RELATIONS WITH THE WHITE HOUSE 

Dealings with Many Administrations — The River and Harbor Bill — 

Marshall Jewell and Garfield — Hawley's Candidacy in 1884 — 

A Critic of Cleveland — Supporter of Harrison. 

WITH seven Presidents — Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, 
Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley, and Roosevelt — 
Mr. Piatt as a Senator was associated during his long 
stay in Washington. With some his relations were 
casual, with one at least anything but friendly, with 
others confidential. When he entered the Senate, 
Hayes was the occupant of the White House, — a well 
intentioned Executive, whose administration was always 
under the shadow of a disputed election, and who lacked 
the personal prestige and force to gather about him the 
real leaders of his party in Congress. Hayes committed 
the fatal blunder of inviting to his official council men 
without political influence either nationally or in their 
home communities. He even went so far in two in- 
stances as to find Cabinet material in men whose af- 
filiations had not been with the party to which he owed 
his political advancement and to which he must look 
for future support. His Cabinet contained eminent 
men, but only one of them, John Sherman, had a 
record for distinguished party service in legislation, 
or could negotiate with Congress on terms of mutual 
understanding. 

494 



Relations with the White House 495 

The Connecticut Senator, new in national service, 
had few dealings with the administration save those 
which were unavoidable in caring for the interests of 
his State. 

During the brief season of Garfield's active incum- 
bency, he seems to have been more frequently at the 
White House — not on errands of his own choosing, 
but in a friendly service for those constituents whose 
eyes were turned in that direction for recognition. 
He was never a seeker for patronage, and the necessities 
of office-hunting were distasteful to him, but he did not 
shirk the duties which the Republicans of Connecticut 
imposed upon him. One mission in particular he 
undertook involving tact and discretion. Marshall 
Jewell, Piatt's rival in the famous midnight caucus of 
1879, had been Chairman of the Republican National 
Committee, which conducted the campaign resulting 
in Garfield's election. He, not unnaturally, expected to 
share in the prestige of Garfield's success, for in those 
days, service at the head of the National Committee 
was rendered gratuitously by recognized party leaders, 
without intimation of other than political reward. 
But after the manner of politics, he was a victim of 
presidential forgetfulness, and with the counting of the 
ballots his services were no longer needed. He wanted 
a place in the Cabinet, but the selection of Mr. Blaine 
as Secretary of State barred the door to other New 
England men. He would have found consolation 
in the offer of an ambassadorship which he might have 
declined; but this salve to his wounded pride was not 
forthcoming. He was not even asked into the councils 
of the administration in minor affairs. In his chagrin 
he turned to Mr. Piatt for comfort. It was the 
Senator's thankless task to act as messenger between 



496 Orville H. Piatt 

the discomfited Chairman and the White House, in a 
futile endeavor to bring about a better understanding 
without conveying the suggestion that Jewell felt him- 
self aggrieved. Garfield's assassination came before 
the injustice could be remedied, and a little later Jewell 
was beyond the need of sympathy or aid. When 
Jewell died, Piatt was asked to take his place as the 
Connecticut member of the National Committee but 
he declined. 

With Garfield's successor, he was on 'friendly but 
not intimate terms. By that time he had a position 
in the Senate which made it worth while for an ad- 
ministration to treat him with respect, but he confined 
his dealings with the White House to those matters 
which developed naturally from his official position. 
He stood behind President Arthur in two important 
crises. He spoke and voted against the Chinese Exclu- 
sion bill which Arthur vetoed, and he opposed at every 
stage the River and Harbor Bill of 1882, which, not- 
withstanding the President's veto, became a law. It 
is a little hard in these days of large expenditure to 
understand the uproar over a River and Harbor bill 
carrying an appropriation of less than $19,000,000, 
but popular feeling, which had condemned the bill 
while it was under consideration in the House, was 
fanned into indignation by its passage in the Senate, 
and flamed into fury on its enactment over the Presi- 
dent's veto, contributing in large measure to the over- 
throw of the Republican majority in the House at the 
elections which came a few weeks later. Mr. Piatt 
was one of twenty-three Senators who voted against 
the bill on its original passage, and one of the sixteen 
who voted to sustain the veto. 

With all his respect for President Arthur, he could 



Relations with the White House 497 

not support him for nomination in 1884. Connecticut 
in that year had a candidate of her own in General 
Hawley, toward whom there was considerable friendly 
sentiment throughout the country, but who with other 
candidates was badly handicapped by the extraordinary 
popularity of James G. Blaine. Mr. Piatt was never 
a delegate to a national convention, nor was General 
Hawley after his election to the Senate. Neither 
would allow his name to be used for the place. On 
this occasion, however, Piatt went to Chicago with a 
few other Connecticut Republicans to do what he could 
for his colleague. He was in constant communication 
with Hawley who remained in Washington and who 
received thirteen votes on the first ballot, including 
the twelve votes of the Connecticut delegation. Al- 
though he would have preferred another candidate 
than Blaine, he did what he could for Blaine's election 
in the campaign which resulted in Democratic majori- 
ties in Connecticut, as throughout the country, and 
he was keenly disappointed in the result. He was too 
strong a party man to reconcile himself easily to any 
Democratic administration, and mingled with his 
natural partisan prejudice was a feeling of personal 
distrust of the new President, which seems to have been 
aggravated by the swelling chorus of independent and 
m^ugwump adulation. With him the Republican creed 
was a religion and he had little in common with the 
New Haven group who were soon busily engaged in 
burning incense at the Cleveland shrine. There does 
not seem to have been an important act of the first 
Cleveland administration with which he was at all 
in accord. As a former Chairman of the Pensions Com- 
mittee, familiar with its proceedings, he was quickly 
brought into antagonism to the new President through 
32 



498 Orville U. Piatt 

the extraordinary succession of pension vetoes, the 
spirit of which angered him, and the flippant tone 
of which offended him. He prepared an exhaustive 
speech on this subject which he dehvered on August 3, 
1886, when one of the pension vetoes was under con- 
sideration. He took the ground that there must in 
the nature of the case be a moral and equitable limita- 
tion upon the exercise of the veto power, and that 
the President who conceived that he should veto every 
bill which as a member of the Senate or the House 
he would feel called upon to vote against, had mistaken 
entirely the purpose of the veto, and the circumstances 
under which it should be exercised : 

If it be established that the President can prevent 
legislation by vetoing any and every bill which is passed 
by the two houses, having at his back a portion of one third 
of each House, then the day of majority rule in this Govern- 
ment is over. 

As with the pension vetoes, so with the tariff reform 
message, with the hair-trigger Chinese exclusion legis- 
lation of 1888, with the removal from office of so-called 
" offensive partisans, " with the President's contempt 
for Congress, — Mr. Piatt was completely out of sym- 
pathy, and his unfriendly attitude during the first 
administration he carried over to the second. He 
disapproved especially Cleveland's course in the cam- 
paign of 1892, when, with the acquiescence of the 
candidate, fusion was effected between the Populists 
of the West and the money interests of the East ; and 
he regarded as incendiary, inciting to anarchy and 
unrest, Cleveland's utterances at the time of the Home- 
stead riots. He made up his mind before the inaugu- 
ration that he would not be beholden to the new 



Relations with the White House 499 

administration for any favors. To a postmaster who 
wanted reappointment he wrote : 

As I have thought the matter over regarding appoint- 
ments under Mr. Cleveland, my feeling has been that I 
would not ask him for anything, or make any recommenda- 
tions. I do not believe in him at all. I want to be free 
to express my mind about him and his party, and I do not 
wish to be under obhgations to him or his party. ... He 
is going to be a Democratic President from his stand- 
point. He will probably get a great many Democrats of 
the country down on him, but at the same time, he is a 
Democrat, and to my mind, the worst and the most dan- 
gerous Democrat in the country, and I am a RepubHcan all 
over. 

The restoration of Queen Liliuokalani to the throne 
of Hawaii offended his patriotism and his good sense; 
the repeal of the Sherman law he regarded as a subter- 
fuge to divert attention from the real cause of business 
depression, and like some other Republican Senators 
he voted for it only under stress of circumstances. 
On the whole, he was as much out of touch with the 
second Cleveland administration as with the first, 
and yet on two notable occasions he gave it genuine 
and whole-hearted support. In the matter of the 
Venezuelan message the President had no more staunch 
defender and when in July, 1894, Cleveland ordered 
federal troops to maintain the transportation of mails 
during the Debs riots at Chicago, Mr. Piatt was one 
of the stoutest advocates of a resolution endorsing the 
action of the Executive. When it was proposed to 
add to the endorsement an approval of voluntary 
arbitration in labor disputes, he vigorously opposed 
the amendment: 



500 Orville H. Piatt 

We are confronted with one supreme question and that 
is, who is President of the United States, and whether we 
have any United States. The question is whether the per- 
son whom we elected is the Chief Executive of the United 
States or whether a man who calls himself "President 
Debs" is the President and Chief Executive of the United 
States. Any other question injected into this discussion 
seems to me entirely out of place. The Senate should 
express its approval of what its lawfully elected President 
has done, and our views about arbitration and all those 
matters can be discussed hereafter. They are in the form 
of law. I object to anything except the straight, square, 
manly endorsement of what President Cleveland has done, 
and I shall vote against anything else. 

That this course both in the Debs affair and in the 
Venezuelan crisis was actuated purely by patriotic 
considerations appears in the sequel. We find him 
writing a little later to a Hartford clergyman : 

For Heaven's sake, don't turn to Cleveland. If you are 
thinking of that, I 'm sure that you don't know him. 
Though he happens to stand right on the money question 
and possibly on Cuba, he is so utterly wrong on most 
questions that I can scarcely think of a greater calamity 
than his re-election. 

While Benjamin Harrison was in the Senate he 
served for a time as Chairman of the Committee on 
Territories, of which Mr. Piatt was the second member, 
and when he retired he was succeeded in the chairman- 
ship by the Connecticut Senator. The two men, 
not altogether unlike in mental habit, entertained 
for each other a mutual respect. The Connecticut 
delegation to the National Convention of 1888 did not 
give Harrison a single vote until the decisive ballot; 



Relations with the White House 501 

but when Harrison came to be nominated at Chicago 
he wrote to Piatt rather playfully, "Our association 
was so friendly in the Senate that I felt sure that you 
would at least accept my nomination with resigna- 
tion," and after the election he replied to a note of 
congratulation, in a tone of familiarity: 

I did not need to be assured that you rejoiced over the 
result, and felt some personal satisfaction in my success. 
I wish I could have gone to the Adirondacks or to the 
heart of some other wilderness region for the month after 
the election. I notice your suggestion that I shall follow 
my own head. Perhaps I may put you to the test in some 
special matter that you will be urging upon my attention, 
and I beg now to warn you that this letter of yours will 
be on file! 

The personal relations thus pleasantly indicated 
continued throughout President Harrison's stay in 
the White House, and for the four years of his term 
Mr. Piatt was one of the bulwarks of the administration 
in the Senate, but he doubted the expediency of Harri- 
son's renomination in 1892, and was inclined rather 
to the selection of some other western man, like 
Allison, Rusk, or McKinley. The result justified his 
doubts. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

MCKINLEY AND HANNA 

Mr. Piatt's Course in 1896 — Later a Friend of McKinley and 
Hanna — Hawley for the Cabinet. 

MR. PLATT took little part in the pre-convention 
politics of 1896. His personal inclination was 
toward Speaker Reed, and his closest friends in Con- 
necticut were earnest supporters of the Maine candidate ; 
but following his usual custom, he did nothing to in- 
fluence the choice of delegates. With Mr. McKinley's 
personal qualities he was less familiar and he was not 
in sympathy with some of the methods employed to 
bring about his nomination, but it became evident that 
McKinley was to be nominated and Mr. Piatt was for 
harmony. There was a great deal of criticism in eastern 
newspapers of McKinley's attitude on the silver ques- 
tion, and some Republican editors even went to the 
point of attacking his record almost up to the day of 
the Convention. To one editor who wrote him asking 
advice as to the course he should pursue, Mr. Piatt sent 
the following frank reply : 

You ask a question which is hard to answer. I think if 
I were running a newspaper I should go a little slow. 
If we must take McKinley as a candidate, we do not want 
to furnish the opposition with ammunition to be used 
against us in the campaign, do we? There is a very de- 
cided feeling among business and financial men, I may say 

502 



McKinlcy and Hanna 503 

among all classes, who believe in an unequivocal declara- 
tion against free trade or anything like it, that McKinlcy 
ought to define his position on the money question at this 
juncture more satisfactorily, while his special friends and 
advocates say that he has never in his public utterances 
failed to state his position in a way that ought to be en- 
tirely satisfactory. The platform of the Convention is 
manifestly to be strong enough and sound enough to 
satisfy eastern sentiment. Now suppose it turns out that 
McKinley is nominated and accepts upon such a platform; 
would it be good policy to have things said now in our news- 
papers which would be thrown in our faces all through the 
campaign? It seems to me that I should wait a while, 
at least. Just now people in Washington are worried more 
over the attitude in which he is left by the action of the 
A. P. A. council in Washington than they are by doubts 
as to where he stands on the money question. That he 
received a delegation sent from Washington by the council, 
and communicated with them in private, so to speak, seems 
to be admitted. I think that was a mistake. If he re- 
ceived such a committee at all it ought to have been in 
public, or at least with witnesses, and every word that 
he said made public. The committee came back to Wash- 
ington and as a result the council action was that the atti- 
tude of McKinley was satisfactory to the council. Then 
after a good many delegates had left, another action was 
taken by the "tailers" setting up that he had denied in an 
interview his reception of the committee, and denouncing 
him. Cardinal Gibbons thereupon comes out with a letter 
which, read between the lines, is supposed to indicate that 
he cannot get a Catholic vote if nominated, and that his 
nomination is to turn the whole campaign into a religious 
warfare. This condition and attitude is causing very 
serious questioning in the minds of thoughtful men. . . . 

During the time that the delegates were being appointed 
there was a tremendous rush to McKinley, which seemed 
almost unaccountable. It looked as if the same rush would 



504 Orville li. Piatt 

continue up to the time of voting and that he was not only 
to be nominated, but elected by unprecedented majorities. 
But since the delegates have all been elected there are 
symptoms of a reaction, the most prominent symptoms 
being those which I have indicated: First, the uneasi- 
ness as to his money views; second, the uneasiness over 
this A. P. A. situation, which may all be expressed in the 
almost unspoken sentiment that he is trying to ride two 
horses. But in view of the fact that, if nominated, we do 
not want our own guns turned upon us through the cam- 
paign, it seems to me that if I were publishing a newspaper 
I would wait. 

The campaign had not been long in progress before 
Mr. Piatt v^as ready to acknowledge the peculiar 
strength of McKinley as a candidate. Early in Novem- 
ber he v^rote to the President-elect : 

I have said many times during this campaign that I re- 
garded your nomination as providential. I doubt if 
another man of those who were talked about could have 
been elected. Although rejoicing in the hour of victory, 
we cannot fail to see that the future is full of problems 
difficult of solution, and that you will need the united and 
unanimous support — especially of the Republican Senators. 
I want here and now to express my desire that there may 
be the fullest accord between yourself and them upon the 
great measures which must be considered and acted upon, 
and to assure you that if re-elected I shall do all in my 
power to promote it. 

When President McKinley came to frame his Cabinet 
he first asked Nelson Dingley to be Secretary of the 
Treasury, but Mr. Dingley declined. This left the 
New England representation in doubt, and Mr. Piatt, 
recalling that no Connecticut man had occupied a seat 
in the Cabinet since Gideon Welles, bethought himself 



McKinley and Hanna 505 

of bringing about the selection of General Hawlcy as 
Secretary of War. He said nothing about it to his 
colleague, but early in January he wrote to a mutual 
friend, John R. Buck, of Hartford: 

I want to write you in absolute confidence. Do you 
think it would be a good thing to try to get General Haw- 
ley into the Cabinet ? Now, this is the first intimation I 
have made in this direction to anyone and I shall not 
say any word about it until I get a letter from you. The 
reason I write you is that as the matter now stands I do 
not believe there is any man from New England who is 
likely to go into the Cabinet. The supposition that Ding- 
ley was going there has kept out all other candidates 
except Boutelle, but I do not believe that there is any 
chance for him. I myself think, without being able to 
speak with authority, that Mr. Dingley is not going into 
the Cabinet and I do not see where the New England man 
is coming from. Massachusetts has no candidate, neither 
has Vermont or Rhode Island. Governor Bussiei is talked 
of. I think that if it were best to urge the matter and 
was agreeable to General Hawley, he might have a very 
good chance to go into the Cabinet. 

The response to this letter was not encouraging, and 
Mr. Piatt telegraphed to Senator Proctor who had gone 
to Cleveland at Mr. Hanna's request, to talk over the 
selection of a New England member of the Cabinet, that 
General Hawley' s Connecticut friends thought it un- 
wise to make any movement in that direction. A 
letter to Mr. Buck at the same time throws an interest- 
ing light upon political conditions : 

I think that the situation yesterday was such that 
there might have been a very good chance to bring about 
such a result if it had been thought advisable, but I could 

' Of New Hampshire. 



5o6 Orville H. Piatt 

not well talk with General Hawley about it, and did 
the next best thing I could think of — consult you — and 
have left it just in the way in which I told you. But I 
think when Senator Proctor finally left, it was with some 
idea that it was possible that Mr. Edmunds might not re- 
fuse an invitation to become Secretary of State, and while 
there was no ground perhaps for supposing that Mr. 
McKinley would ask him, that Senator Proctor was inclined 
to advise it as a solution of the New England problem. I 
don't think anything will come of that, however. Every- 
thing is all at sea about the Cabinet. Confidentially, I 
will say to you I think Mr. McKinley did not indicate 
to Allison that he would be glad to have him take the 
Treasury, but did want him to become Secretary of State. 
Now the talk is that he will offer the Secretaryship of State 
to Mr. Sherman, and how much reliance there is to be 
placed in that I do not know. I doubt it very much. 
If he should, and Senator Sherman should accept, it would 
be very disappointing to those who know Mr. Sherman. 
I very much fear that the whole matter will be an illus- 
tration of the old proverb, "through the woods, and 
through the woods, and cut a crooked stick at last. " 
It does not seem to me that Mr. McKinley has gone about 
the business of selecting a Cabinet in a way calculated 
to produce the best results. I fear he is too much under 
the influence and direction of Mr. Hanna, and that Cabinet- 
making is being carried on somewhat after the methods 
learned by Mr. Hanna in his political campaign, but I do 
not know that I am right about this. If anything further 
sho-uld turn up looking to the selection of a Cabinet officer 
from Connecticut I will consult with you immediately. 

A week later he felt impelled to appeal directly to 
Mr. Hanna with whom up to that time he had been in 
only formal communication, thus initiating a correspon- 
dence which led to one of the most intimate personal 
associations of his career : 



McKinley and Hanna 507 

Honorable Mark Hanna, Cleveland, Ohio, 
My dear Sir: 

Is this Cabinet making a case of "Ask, and ye shall re- 
ceive, knock and it shall be opened unto you," or is it a case 
of the President selecting a Cabinet without undue soli- 
citation? I make this inquiry rather in a playful than 
serious frame of mind, because in all the gossip, newspaper 
prophesy, and assertion, I have seen no evidence that it is 
understood anywhere that Connecticut is a New England 
State at all. Perhaps it is our fault that we have not been 

advertising and booming it. 

Sincerely yours, 

0. H. Platt. 

From this introduction the following entertaining 
correspondence resulted : 

(Persottal) 

Cleveland, Ohio, January 20, 1897. 

My dear Senator Platt : 

Like you, I had supposed the selection of his Cabinet 
would have been left to the President himself, but it 
appears from the newspapers and some things that have 
happened, that such is not to be the case. 

By the way, the receipt of your letter was the first 
intimation I had received that you are a candidate for 
Cabinet honors. Unlike most applicants, you must have 
applied to the President direct, instead of to me. Had 
you filed your application here we would have boomed you, 
and Connecticut would have been duly advertised. Has 
Connecticut still a candidate? If so, we '11 boom her. 

Truly yours, 

M. A. Hanna. 

January 25, 1897. 
Honorable 0. H. Platt, Washington, D. C. 
Dear Mr. Hanna: 

I have your favor of January 20th. If you suppose 
I was writing my former letter because I hoped that 



5o8 Orville H. Piatt 

lightning might strike me, you were never more mistaken. 
But I do hope that General Hawley may be thought of for 
Secretary of War or of the Navy. I suppose it is our own 
fault that we do not keep Connecticut continually in the 
public eye ; but strange as it may seem, I think we are more 
modest up in that State than people in other localities. 

Very truly yours, 

O. H. Platt. 

Cleveland, Ohio, January 28, 1897. 

Honorable 0. H. Platt, Washington, D. C. 
My dear Senator: 

I am in receipt of yours of the twenty-fifth instant. 
I don't think I "suspected" you, and I am sure your valu- 
able service in the Senate will be a consolation to the new 
administration. 

I cannot give you any reliable information as to what 
consideration is being given to your State. Personally, 
I appreciate her loyal support in the campaign, and desire 
to express my high esteem of her distinguished Senators. 

Truly yours, 

M. A. Hanna. 

Though nothing came of the proposal to give Con- 
necticut representation in the Cabinet, the relations thus 
begun were soon to become much closer. Mr. Hanna 
a few weeks later entered the Senate as John Sherman's 
successor, and he lost no time in cultivating the friend- 
ship of the older statesman for whom he soon con- 
ceived a deep affection, which was returned in kind.^ 

> When Senator Hanna was fighting hard for re-election in the 
fall of 1903, Mr. Platt issued the following statement : "Ohio owes 
to the country as well as to itself the return of Senator Hanna to 
the United States Senate as his own successor. He has won, and 
justly so, the position of a tru5>ted and conspicuous Senatorial 
leader. His ability, his integrity, and his influence are recog- 
nized by all. Ohio has had many great Senators, but none greater 



McKinley and Hanna 509 

From that time to the day he rested finally from his 
labors, the Ohio leader had no closer or more loving 
associate. For many months, the two Senators lived 
in neighboring apartments at the same hotel ; for days 
at a time they ate at the same table. The intimacy 
between them which grew from companionship and 
mutual confidence, served also to bring the Connecticut 
Senator into confidential relations with the new 
President. When the Cuban situation became acute 
in the following winter, Mr. Piatt was, next to Mr. 
Hanna himself, the Senator called into consultation 
most frequently at the White House, and, through 
many trying weeks of anxious suspense, he was an 
intermediary between the administration and the 
Senate. During the months succeeding the war, when 
new questions of grave importance were pressing upon 
him. President McKinley turned instinctively to him 
for counsel and support, and throughout the administra- 
tion he remained its close and constant adviser, not only 
in Cuban affairs but also on every other serious govern- 
mental problem. In President McKinley as a man he 
grew to have an abiding faith, of which he was never 
reluctant to make profession. Once in the Senate he 
said: 

The people of the country have confidence in William 
McKinley as President of the United States. I go a little 
further than that, and I aver that no President of the 
United States while holding the offtce of President ever 
had the confidence, the respect, the love, and the affection 

I think than Marcus A. Hanna, none truer, none braver, none 
stronger. The effect of his loss as a Senator can only be compared 
to the effect of the loss of a great general to an army during the 
stress of battle. His return to the Senate ought not to be for a 
moment in doubt." 



5IO Orville H. Piatt 

of the people to the extent which President McKinley has. 
Other Presidents have been canonized after their death; 
they have passed into history as entitled to confidence, 
respect, and love, but no President who, now dead, is thus 
respected, ever escaped in office the criticisms, the in- 
nuendoes, and the attacks which President McKinley has 
justly escaped. 

When the news came from Buffalo of the attack on 
the President's life Mr. Piatt thus gave expression to 
his grief : 

President McKinley was so great and good and had the 
welfare of the whole people so much at heart that it seems 
impossible that any human being should wish to injure 
him. No one can find words fully to express what all 
feel. No more dastardly crime was ever attempted. The 
weapon fired at the President was aimed also at every 
citizen of the Republic. In our distress and fear we can 
only hope and pray and wait. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

ROOSEVELT 

A Loyal Supporter of Roosevelt — Urges Nomination in 1904 — 
Appeals to Business Interests — For Moderation in 1905. 

WITH the closing of the Hd of McKinley's coffin, 
Senator Piatt, advanced in years though he 
was, turned to the future with youthful hope and 
courage. Concerning the new President he knew little 
from personal contact. Such meetings as there had 
been between the two had been casual. To Colonel 
Roosevelt likewise, Senator Piatt was little better than 
a name — one of several whom he recognized as among 
the leaders of the Senate. No two men could be more 
unlike in temperament. They were as widely apart 
in manner and political association as they were in 
years. Yet they were to be drawn close, one to the 
other, and to work in effective co-operation, though 
not always in complete accord as to method, so long as 
the Senator lived. The younger and more impetuous 
man learned very soon to look to the elder for counsel. 
He had not been in the White House a week before he 
sent for Mr. Piatt and appealed to him for suggestion 
and advice. The response was prompt and generous, 
and from the confidence then bestowed there sprung a 
liking between the two which developed into a strong 
attachment. "What an old trump he is!" exclaimed 
the President on one occasion when the support of 

511 



512 Orville H. Piatt 

Mr. Piatt had been especially timely ; and on another 
occasion, "Of all the public men I have known, he is the 
frankest in his political dealings." After the Senator's 
death, he said to a visitor at the White House, ' ' He was 
the grandest and noblest man I ever knew ! ' ' Senator 
Piatt in turn regarded Roosevelt as one of the most 
extraordinary- characters in American history. He 
believed in the President's honesty of purpose, in his 
fearlessness, and in his ultimate effectiveness. Shortly 
after his assumption of office, the President had occasion 
to visit his sister at her summer home in Farmington, 
Connecticut, and he invited the Senator and Mrs. Piatt 
to meet him there. The two talked over many ques- 
tions of public policy freely and frankly. After the 
meeting, Mr. Piatt wrote to a friend a strikingly 
prophetic appreciation of the President's character and 
aims: 

I saw the President last Tuesday at Farmington and 
had quite a talk with him. I think he will do well. He 
is as modest a man as ever lived. Positive, aggressive, 
and full of intensity, but, with it all, he has one thing 
which is going to take him through, and that is a deter- 
mination to do the right thing as he sees it. He will 
stir up the people in various ways, and I think our American 
people are going to like a man who is positive, aggressive, 
and ambitious — those elements in Jackson which gained 
for him the sobriquet of " Old Hickory, " and attached our 
people to him as they have never been attached to any 
other President. They like it; they like a man who is 
something out of the ordinary, and my present thought 
about Roosevelt is that he is going to have a tremendous 
popular following. 

From that time till the day of his death, Mr. 
Piatt, while not agreeing with President Roosevelt in 



Roosevelt 513 

all respects, gave him a loyal support. In the inner 
councils of the Senate, he patiently impressed upon his 
associates how indispensable it was always to bear in 
mind Mr. Roosevelt's opinions and his influence among 
the people. Many a time when the little group of 
Republican leaders had nearly reached a conclusion 
after a period of communing, he, sitting almost silent 
until then, would change the whole trend of the talk, 
with the slowly spoken suggestion: "But, you have 
omitted a very important consideration — the Man in 
the White House." 

It will never be fully known how great an influence 
upon the history of those days he exerted, through 
temperate suggestions at one end of the avenue and 
stimulating advice at the other. For over three years 
he, more than any other, contributed to the harmonious 
workings of the executive and legislative branches of 
the Government. 

As the time for naming a Republican candidate in 
1904 approached, Mr. Piatt was one of the first to see 
that the only safe course for the party was to nominate 
Roosevelt and go to the people in unqualified endorse- 
ment of the Roosevelt administration. In spite of his 
warm friendship for Mark Hanna he did not hesitate 
when it came to the question with several busy political 
groups whether Roosevelt or Hanna should be the 
Republican nominee. The fact that Hanna's nomina- 
tion would have been taken by the country to mean a 
repudiation of Roosevelt's ideals was enough to de- 
termine his course. The influence of the great moneyed 
interests, some of which were powerfully exerting 
themselves in Hanna's behalf, only stimulated him to 
efforts for Roosevelt, such as he had never before 
volunteered for a candidate for nomination. The 
33 



514 Orville H. Piatt 

letters and appeals which he sent out during the months 
preceding the Republican convention to his closest 
correspondents in financial circles, might well become a 
part of the recorded history of a strenuous time. 

As early as May, 1903, the question of Roosevelt's 
nomination became acute through Hanna's opposition 
to a formal endorsement by the Ohio State Convention 
— an opposition which was promptly withdrawn after a 
spirited exchange of telegrams. Mr. Piatt writing to 
Colonel Philo Pratt Hotchkiss, of Brooklyn, on May 
28th, touched on this political incident: 

I do not quite understand Hanna's action in opposing 
the endorsement of the President by the Ohio Convention. 
Ohio politics, like New York politics, gives one the head- 
ache when he attempts to study the situation out. I think 
Senator Hanna has been a very good friend of President 
Roosevelt's administration, perfectly loyal, and in no 
sense a candidate himself, but I apprehend that he has felt 
more strongly than Republican politicians generally that 
there is a coolness toward the President on the part of 
financial people in New York and elsewhere, and that some- 
thing might happen between now and 1904 which would 
make it impossible to secure their support for him, and that, 
therefore, it would be wiser not to try to forestall the matter. 
I feel pretty certain from what I know of him that Mr. 
Hanna has no other candidate, and that if conditions 
should be the same a year hence, he would be in favor of 
the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt, but you see he has set 
himself right in this matter. I think he felt that he had 
made a mistake. 

In spite of the Ohio episode, the talk about Hanna's 
candidacy persisted and Connecticut friends of the 
President began to write the Senator anxious letters. 
To one of these, late in November, he replied : 



Roosevelt 515 

If I understand the situation, Mr. Hanna is not a candi- 
date for the Presidency, will not be, and deplores all this 
talk; but how can he stop it? That there is an opposition 
to the nomination of President Roosevelt, is undoubtedly 
true. It is not very extensive, or very influential, but noisy, 
and, in my judgment, will utterly fail when the Convention 
is held — indeed, I doubt if it manifests itself there. It 
comes from both ends of the party — from the moneyed in- 
fluences in Wall Street, and the agitators in the labor 
movement — one as much as the other. Each of these 
elements wish to force the President to make terms with 
them, but he will not do it. I think I know that Senator 
Hanna does not sympathize with this in the least. I have 
a higher regard, and more genuine respect for him than you 
seem to have. I believe that he is a straightforward, 
earnest, truthful man, who acts from conviction, fears no 
one, and makes no effort to improperly conciliate people 
who disagree with him. He is very much like President 
Roosevelt in this respect. 

As the interest became more intense he volunteered 
appeals in quarters where he thought they would be of 
greatest value. To a long valued friend, allied with 
one of the giant corporations, he wrote on December 
II, 1903: 

I do not know just how much importance to attach to 
the current opposition to Roosevelt, by what are called the 
"corporate and money influences" in New York. There 
is a great deal said about it, as if it were widespread and 
violent. I know that it does not include the whole of 
that class of people, because I know many bankers and capi- 
talists, railroad and business men, who are his strong, 
good friends, and they are not among the smaller and 
weaker parties either. They do not talk as much about it 
as those who oppose him, but they are, nevertheless, loyal 
and staunch friends of the President. Now, it is a great 



5i6 Orville H. Piatt 

mistake for capitalistic interests to oppose Roosevelt. His 
nomination is as certain as the time comes, in my judg- 
ment. I think he will be nominated by acclamation, so 
what is to be gained by the Wall Street contingent and the 
railroad interests in this seeming opposition to him? I 
cannot help thinking that the New York gentlemen who 
are supposed to be antagonistic to him, are making the 
mistake of their lives, in supposing that they can either 
control the Republican nomination, or defeat Roosevelt, if 
nominated. They seem to have become possessed of the 
idea that they are the controlling forces in such matters; 
that if they do not contribute to a large campaign fund, the 
candidate cannot be elected ; that if they were to contribute 
to the Democratic campaign fund, that would insure the 
election of the Democrat. They do not realize that they 
have the whole country against them. I do not say it 
ought to be against them, but that it is against them, and 
if it were understood that they were controlHng the Re- 
publican nomination, their candidate would lack the sup- 
port of the people generally, or if it were thought that 
Roosevelt had made terms with them, it would be almost 
impossible to elect him. You know how this is. There 
is a deep-seated prejudice against the wealthy people on 
the part of the common people, so-called — and they will 
not go for what the moneyed classes, as they are called, are 
supposed to want. Legislation cannot be defeated in any 
way so easily as to say that the trusts want it. The passage 
of legislation can be in no manner so easily insured, as 
to say that the trusts do not want it, and by the word 
"trusts" the people mean all parties who are engaged in 
large business enterprises. 

Now, these gentlemen who do not like Roosevelt ought 
to look at it in another way. They ought to understand 
that his nomination is a foregone conclusion; that against 
him is to be nominated some Democrat; that the election 
of this Democrat means the election of a Democratic House 
of Representatives. Do they realize what that means, or 



Roosevelt 517 

would mean to business interests, and are they willing to 
illustrate the old saying of "A man biting off his nose to 
spite his face"? It seems to me that they are all wrong, 
and very foolish, and that this grows out of an almost 
insane notion they have that they can control politics, 
and that what they say and what they want must be 
accepted. 

I write this to you because I want to get your opinion 
of how strong this opposition to Roosevelt is. The opposi- 
tion appears to think that if Hanna should be nominated 
he could be elected. He could not begin to be elected. 
There is no Republican in the United States who can be 
elected except Roosevelt, and Hanna would be buried out 
of sight. They seem to think that if they could get George 
Gray nominated on the Democratic side, they could elect 
him. They can not nominate George Gray, and they could 
not elect him if they did. They seem to believe that they 
could elect Parker. I know they could not, but if they 
could, he would be just what McClellan is going to be as 
Mayor of New York — absolutely controlled by the most 
dangerous elements of the Democratic party. There is 
no use in my running on about this — I only want to 
know what you think about it. 

To the same correspondent on December 30th, he 
wrote again: 

1 rather look now for a nomination by acclamation. The 
criticism against him [Roosevelt] has been tested and is 
seen to be carping only. It is based on a supposed condi- 
tion which does not exist, namely: That the President is 
an unsafe man. I am not his worshipper, but I do maintain 
that he is a conservative President rather than an ambi- 
tious or an unsafe one, and that the country is infinitely 
better off under his administration than it would be un- 
der any Democratic administration— I don't care who the 
President might be. 



5i8 Orville H. Piatt 

A President represents his party, and I long ago made 
up my mind that the Democrat who poses as better than 
his party is the most dangerous and unsafe man in it. 
When you come to think of it, what rehance could be 
placed on Parker, or Gorman, or Olney, or Cockrell — the 
four now talked about as possible candidates? Each 
of them would be first a Democrat, with all the interests 
of his party at heart, and if, as might be hoped by the con- 
servative element of the party, so-called, he stood out 
against the great majority of his party, he would be with- 
out power. If I were a Republican, fearful that Roosevelt 
would do something that I thought he ought not to, I would 
not help elect one of these men in the hope that he would 
be better, according to my ideas, than Roosevelt, nor 
would you. 

Mind you I am not apologizing for or defending Roosevelt. 
I commend him. Looking over his whole legislative acts 
I cannot find one that I would have had otherwise, or one 
which I think was to the detriment of our country. T 
suppose that men in New York below Fourteenth Street 
and men in other sections of the country who take their 
cue from the former, would not agree with me. The people 
who control great combinations of capital want free course 
to run and be glorified. Men who have lost money as the 
result of these great combinations also charge that up to 
the administration. Politicians who sought personal power 
and aggrandizement have been disappointed, and mug- 
wumps think that the President has played politics too 
much. Employers feel that the President has sympathized 
too much with labor unions, but the leaders of labor unions 
think that in the success of the Democratic party their 
schemes would be advanced. The opposition to Roosevelt 
comes from extremists. While I do not think he can be 
accused of steering a middle course between them for any 
personal reasons, the fact that he has not been an extremist, 
demonstrates what I said a little while ago, that he is a 
conservative rather than an unsafe man. He has had, I 



Roosevelt 519 

think, one idea which has guided him, and that is to do 
what he thinks right in every emergency. No man could 
have a stronger desire in this direction than he, and that 
is just what the people want, and it is why the great mass 
of the Republican party supports him. And he is going to 
be nominated, and he is going to be elected. He is going 
to be the people's candidate, not the candidate of the 
trusts or of the hoodlums, but of the conservative elements. 

Although convinced that Roosevelt was to be nomi- 
nated, he did not venture any risks so far as his own 
State was concerned. To one of the most influential 
Republicans in the State, Charles F. Brooker, he wrote 
on February ist: 

What do you hear about delegates from Connecticut to 
the National Convention? I have not one word to say 
as to who should go, but I do hope that no one will be 
complimented by being selected unless it is understood 
that he is for Roosevelt. We have never instructed in our 
Conventions, and have heretofore sent persons more because 
they were anxious to go than because they were in favor 
of any particular candidate, with the result that we have 
had divided delegations. I am very anxious, as I know you 
are, to have a solid Roosevelt delegation, and to be certain 
that no one goes who is opposed to him. No such person 
should be permitted to go just because he is a good fellow 
and wants to go. 

Roosevelt was nominated by acclamation, as prob- 
ably would have been the case, even had Mark Hanna 
lived; for before Mr. Hanna took to his bed in his 
final illness, the nomination of the President was 
assured. Throughout the pre-convention season, and 
later, during the campaign, Senator Piatt, with sure 
political insight, insisted that the President's personal- 
ity must be the dominating note. To Representative 



520 Orville H. Piatt 

E. J. Hill, a few weeks before the Chicago Convention, 
he wrote: 

" The point in the platform should be Roosevelt — 
that is what we have to stand on." 

This theme he emphasized in every speech he made 
during the campaign. Presiding over the State Con- 
vention at Hartford, on September 13th, he said: 

If the Democratic party chooses to make Roosevelt, 
the man, the issue in this campaign we welcome that issue 
without fear. Every citizen of the United States, from the 
professional politician to the schoolboy in his teens, knows 
that in the heart of Theodore Roosevelt, the President, 
there is one overshadowing purpose, and that is to do 
what Roosevelt, the man, believes to be honest, right, 
and true. What has he done that was not honest, right, and 
true? In the interest of all that makes for American 
honor let us have a President who has but one guiding 
principle, and that to do what he believes to be right, for 
the honor of his country, for the upbuilding of its people, 
for the glory of its name. 

Would you have the people think him unsafe ? No man 
is unsafe whose life is clean, and pure, and noble, and who 
walks in one path only, the path where duty seems to him 
to point. In all that represents American manhood, 
American character, American progress, American welfare, 
Theodore Roosevelt stands forth to-day our most conspicu- 
ous example. It was because the Republicans of the United 
States recognized this that they demanded with one voice 
that he should be called to further duty and further service, 
in that most exalted of all places, in that most responsible 
and wearing of all positions, the Presidency of the United 
States.^ 

> At the Hyperion Theatre in New Haven, on November 3d, 
when he occupied the platform jointly with Mr. Taft, he said in 
the course of a glowing eulogy of the President: "I want to speak 
of a man — I may say the man, who more than any other to-day, 



Roosevelt 521 

No sooner was the election over than the forces of 
unrest began to bestir themselves. Newspapers, con- 
stantly on the lookout for political sensation, encoura<::ed 
and predicted radical doings at Washington. The 
President, sustained by an unprecedented expression of 
popular confidence, was credited with all sorts of revo- 
lutionary intentions. There was to be an immediate 
revision of the tariff. The trusts were to be attacked 
without mercy and beaten into submission; the rail- 
roads were to be brought to book. The air was full of 



fills the mind and heart of the American people. That man is 
Theodore Roosevelt. Failing in an appeal to the people on ques- 
tions usually called 'issues,' the opposition has concentrated with 
batteries of folly and hate upon him. They have made Theodore 
Roosevelt the man, and the President, the issue in this campaign, 
and we accept it w^illingly, joyfully even — for if it were possible 
to conceive of the American people turning their backs on Theodore 
Roosevelt, it would mark the beginning of the reversal of those 
policies and principles and deeds that have, in these last eight 
years, made us the greatest of all peoples under the sun. But 
what of the man ? No manlier man has ever lived in our history. 
In all those qualities which make up the sum of American manhood, 
he has no superior. Intense physical, mental, and moral strength 
are his characteristics. Honesty that goes to the very core of his 
being; patriotism that dominates every thought and act; energies 
that seek the realization of the highest ideals in life and govern- 
ment — these are the characteristics of Theodore Roosevelt. Grad- 
uated from Harvard twenty-four years ago, his record and life prove 
conclusively the qualities which I have ascribed to him. It is a life 
and a record of which statesmen are proud, which the young men 
of the Republic should emulate, which the children should study, 
as they study the lives of the world's great men. He came to 
his present station without intrigue, and without self-seeking. 
He was nominated for the Vice-Presidency in 1900 because the 
people of the United States had come to know him, because his 
fame had covered the land between the two oceans, and because 
the thoughtful and far-seeing citizens saw in him the man most 
fitted to be associated with William McKinley, and if the occasion 
ever came, to take up the work of that great, gracious, beloved — 
now martyred — President." 



522 Orville H. Piatt 

disturbing rumors. Mr. Piatt was distressed by the 
tone of newspaper comment. To a brother Senator, 
four days after the election, he wrote : 

It is a time to go slow. It is a time for the President 
to drop the strenuous, and take up the simple life for a while. 
He ought not, in my judgment, to make one single positive 
recommendation in his next message — there is no oc- 
casion for it. We want time to think and to turn around. 
A lot of mischief can be done if we do not have it, and be- 
twixt the construction of the Cabinet and the recommenda- 
tions for legislation, the newspaper correspondents, who 
have nothing else to do, will have the whole country 
stirred up. 

The President respected newspaper forecasts in his 
annual message only in the recommendation of stringent 
legislation regarding railroad rates ; but throughout the 
winter the chorus of radicalism increased and Mr. 
Piatt with other staunch Republicans began to fear 
for the future. He felt that something would have 
to be done sooner or later toward the regulation of 
railroad rates, but he did not believe that the time was 
immediately ripe and he was averse to drastic legislation 
at any time. His mind was filled with a vague dread. 
To a leading Connecticut business man he wrote on 
January i6, 1905: 

I wonder if people around the country worry as much 
over things as I do. I hope not. There are tendencies 
now which I do not like very well, and yet I question 
whether or not I am too much of an old fogy to keep up 
with the procession, or whether the procession is really 
moving too fast. 

In one of his last letters, written only a few weeks 
before his death, he lamented: "Congress is just as 



Roosevelt 523 

likely to go wild some day as the Kansas legislature, 
and a conservative man is liable any moment to find 
himself trampled out of sight." 

Through all this time and up to the hour of his final 
departure from Washington he was in constant com- 
munication with the White House and it was his pleasure 
to advance so far as he could in the Senate the arbitration 
treaties which the administration keenly desired. 
What would have been his course in the fruitful days 
so soon to follow is a question which those who sur- 
vived him have often asked themselves, grieving that 
at so critical a time the country should not have had 
the benefit of his sage and patriotic counsel. 



CHAPTER XL 

POLITICS AND PATRONAGE 

A Stranger to Political Manipulation — Annoyed by Office Seekers 
— Zealous for Connecticut. 

TO a masteiy of the art of politics, Mr. Piatt made 
no pretension. The details of the machinery of 
political management carried no special appeal to him. 
In his earlier years he had taken an active interest in 
the work of party organization, first with the American 
or "Know Nothing" party, and later with the Republi- 
can party, but it had been because he saw in that occu- 
pation a means to great ends to which he pinned his 
faith. Prior to 1856 he had been Chairman of the 
State Committee of the American party, which seemed 
to him as a young man to offer at the moment the 
weapon closest at hand for striking a blow at the cause 
of slavery. A little later he became identified with 
the Republican organization, which was to hold his 
allegiance to the end, and there, too, he speedily came 
to participate in the active management of the party's 
affairs, serving for a time as Chairman of the State 
Committee. He showed throughout this stage of his 
career a high talent for organization and there never 
was a time when he did not emphasize among his politi- 
cal associates the importance of systematized political 
effort. But of the more subtle art of manipulation, of 
trades, of combinations, he was as innocent as a child, 

524 



Politics and Patronage 525 

and he disdained to avail himself of it even when his 
personal political fortunes were at hazard. Writing 
on March 30, 1896, to Charles F. Chapin, the editor of 
the Waterbury American he said: 

Much obliged for your editorial in the American referring 
to myself. And yet, I think the Herald is pretty nearly 
right in its assertion that I am "not an expert in the arts 
of the politician" — that is to say, I have never had any 
personal political following in Connecticut. I have never 
tried to influence nominations or to build myself up by 
patronage or bargains. I can not do it now, if I would, 
and I will not. I could no more attempt to make an organi- 
zation which would look after the nominations for the 
Senate and the House in my interest than I could fly. 
I have had just one object and purpose here, and that is 
to represent my State as well as I could in the Senate. I 
incline to the belief that a large majority of Republicans 
would be glad to see me re-elected, and if so, I hope that 
their wishes may prevail against any arts of expert politi- 
cians. If the people want someone else, I shall, of course, 
submit with the best grace that I can. 

Writing about the same time to J. H. McDonald of 
New Haven, he gave expression to the same thought in 
a little different way: 

You see that I have no organization. I never have at- 
tempted to have one. I have never felt that it was neces- 
sary to have a Piatt party in Connecticut. I have been 
quite content to commend myself, if I could, by my actions, 
to the confidence of the people generally so I am in just 
this situation — I think from what I hear that among the 
voters of the Republican party there is generally speaking 
a desire that I should be returned as Senator. If this senti- 
ment exists, it exists without any organization upon my 
part; without any effort to create it through the efforts 
of political friends in the different sections and towns of 



526 Orville H. Piatt 

the State. And while in a way, I know, and am in touch 
with a good many Republicans in most of the towns, I have 
never asked them the question whether they were for my 
return, and I never asked them to do anything for me. 

He never had a political manager or a personal rep- 
resentative in Connecticut to keep an eye on his politi- 
cal fences. Replying on July 14, 1895, to an intimate 
friend who had advised him to let whoever was look- 
ing after his interests attend to the publication and 
distribution of a speech, he said: 

There is no one, absolutely no one looking out for my 
interests ; plenty of good friends but no one to plan or give 
time or thought or labor to any work in my behalf. This 
may seem strange to you, but it is literally true. I can 
really do nothing for myself, and there is no one to do any- 
thing for me, except to wish me well and assure me that 
nothing needs to be done. 

That even to the end of his career, however, he 
showed an appreciation of the larger forces of politics 
— of the influence of the press, of systematic canvasses, 
of deliberate cultivation of public sentiment, is shown 
throughout his correspondence; and he regarded it 
always as a proper function for a United States Senator 
to watch and encourage these forces, although he seems 
rarely to have used his influence, save when greatly 
moved, as during the campaign of 1904, when the elec- 
tion of President Roosevelt was in the balance. He was 
then at his home in Judea, and becoming anxious about 
the way things were going in Connecticut, he wrote, on 
September 19th, to Michael Kenealy, Chairman of the 
Republican State Central Committee; after reviewing 
the situation generally, and pointing out dangers 
and pitfalls, he concluded: 



Politics and Patronage 527 

Now, why all this talk ? Simply that I think the Republ i- 
can State Committee ought to make unusual efforts for 
thorough organization and active work at once. Years 
ago we used to have a canvass of the State, a regular house 
to house canvass, so that what every voter was going to 
do was known in advance. Then came our registration 
law, and the work of making a canvass fell into disuse 
and the registrars were looked to for the information. I 
do not suppose that it is possible to go back to the old way 
of doing things. It was a time when Republican workers 
used to do it for the love of the thing, and men were found 
in every town who were glad to do it, and did it effectively, 
and it seems to me that something should be devised to get 
better information than we have been in the habit of 
getting lately. I do not know what, I am sure, but it has 
seemed to me that this was manifestly a campaign which 
ought to attract the young men, and young men in every 
town might be stirred up to the work. . . . 

I do not know how you are going to reach the towns. 
You have your State Committee, the members of which are 
so filled with other schemes for nomination of state officers 
and Senators and Representatives, that they work at that 
more than they work for a complete and effective organiza- 
tion of voters. The first Monday of October is right on 
us — it comes on the third, and that is only thirteen days 
off. We have had very great success in carrying the towns 
until we have such a large proportion of them that it is 
hard to increase it, and easy to lose some towns. If there 
is a falling off in the number of towns we carry, it will be 
heralded as an indication of Democratic strength and will 
give the Democrats hope. 

It was not often that he permitted himself to enter 
thus explicitly into the details of management. His 
first election to the Senate had been effected with the 
expenditure of hardly any money, and without the stain 
of a combination or trade and every subsequent election 



528 Orville H. Piatt 

came with unanimity. To the election of delegates for 
national conventions, to the influencing of the choice of 
the State for a Republican nominee for President, he 
was customarily indifferent. His only interest was 
that the State of Connecticut should not be subject 
to misrepresentation in the national councils of the 
party. He believed religiously in putting none but 
Republicans on guard ^ but the "spoils of ofhce" was 
distasteful to him. "I hate the whole thing which is 
known as patronage" he wrote to G. Wells Root of 
Hartford, March 4, 1890, "and want to have just as 
little to do with it as is consistent with my duty to the 
State," and toward the end of his service he wrote to a 
department official: "I long ago learned that when a 
person is appointed on my recommendation, it only 
makes me a lot of additional worry and trouble." Yet 
he was compelled to participate to some extent in the 
scramble for office, particularly in 1889 and 1897, 
when the Republicans came into power after periods of 
Democratic control. His experiences, at the beginning 
of the Harrison administration especially, resulted in 
vexation of spirit, as a glance at correspondence written 
while he was passing through them will show. To a 
Hartford applicant for office, who complained that he 
had not been considerately treated, Mr. Piatt wrote on 
March 25, 1889: 

I regret that you should have been disappointed in your 
interviews with me, or should have felt that I had anything 
but a kind feeling toward you. I did not intend to convey 

1 " The only suggestion that I want to make to you about the 
appointments of deputies is that you should n't appoint Democrats 
in any instance. It is very few offices that we have, and I want 
them to be filled by Republicans." — Letter to E. F. Strong, Bridge- 
port, Aug. 13, 1890. 



Politics and Patronage 529 

any such impression ; but you took me at a time when I had 
not averaged more than five hours' sleep for ten days — the 
last days of the session being spent in severe work and at a 
time when others were waiting for me, and when everyone 
I saw wanted me to do something to get them an office. 
Perhaps I was impatient. ... I recognize fully your ser- 
vices for the Republican party, and do not intend in any way 
to belittle them. If there is anything I can do in the way 
of helping you to a position which would be agreeable to 
you, and to which you would be adapted, I should be quite 
willing to do so. But there seems to be an erroneous idea — 
I won't say that you have it — that in some way I have 
offices to dispose of, or that I can get people appointed to 
office by merely saying so, whereas, I find, and am made 
to feel every day, that Connecticut is an exceedingly small 
State, and gets very little consideration. 

To Samuel H. Crampton of i\Iadison, Connecticut, 
he wrote on April 5, 1890: 

I know there is disappointment more or less marked 
and felt over appointments; but if you will think of it 
for a moment I think you will conclude that this is in- 
evitable. I do not beheve any power short of omniscience 
could avoid it ; and you know that, although the Supreme 
Being is omniscient, there are a great many people who are 
not ready to think that what he does and orders is the 
best thing after all. 

I wish it were possible to get along and have every one 
satisfied; but it never was and never will be under our 
system of selecting officials. And I do not know that that 
system can be improved. It seems to me one of the weak 
spots in our Government. When we have carried an elec- 
tion, the attention of the people is turned, at once, away 
from the principles which have been fought out, to the 
question of who will get the offices. 

As to general appointments, there can not be one for 

34 



530 Orville H. Piatt 

every fifty persons who want them; and, when it comes 
down to local offices, it is very seldom that there is any 
unanimity as to who should fill them; and so a large 
portion of the Republicans feel, whatever is done, that 
their ideas of what is best were disregarded. Of course 
the man who gets the office and his friends are satisfied, 
but they are usually in the minority ; that is, other persons 
who wanted the office, and their friends, are the larger 
number; and so there inevitably comes a feeling of disap- 
pointment and discouragement, and it finds expression 
in criticisms more or less pronounced. If you will think 
of it for a moment you will see that this must be so. . . . 
Really, however, the offices are but a minor part of politics; 
measures are of infinitely more consequence than men ; and 
whether a particular man is Senator or Governor or post- 
master, or any other official, is a matter of small conse- 
quence compared with the principles which obtain in 
government. 

To a disappointed Hartford aspirant he said : 

However disagreeable any appointments may have been 
to you, I want you to stop a minute before you finally 
conclude upon the action indicated in your letter. Do 
not commit yourself in the direction you speak of just now. 
I would like to have an opportunity to talk it over with 
you before we part political company. I do not care 
anything about the next election in Connecticut, so far 
as my personal fortunes are concerned. I am quite ready, 
if Connecticut wants to send some other RepubHcan to the 
Senate, to coincide with the wishes of the people in that 
respect. But I should be mortified to have Connecticut 
send a Democrat to the Senate, and notwithstanding your 
present disappointment, I think you would be also. 

It was bad enough to be fretted with the local rivalries 
of politicians at home but even more exasperating was 
the demand upon him from clerks in the departments 



Politics and Patronage 531 

in Washington who claimed Connecticut as their legal 
residence and who looked to his influence for increase in 
salary. One of these, a clerk in the pension office who 
had been especially insistent in his demands, elicited a 
rejoinder which he was not likely soon to forget : 

I tell you very frankly I do not like the method which 
you take with reference to your promotion, or the tone of 
your letters to me on the subject. I have been disposed 
to help you. I have spent more time trying to help you 
than in case of any other clerk in Washington. I do not 
like this continued prodding and continued instruction 
on your part as to what I am to do in the matter. You 
evidently misunderstand the position and duties of a 
Senator. 

The demand upon him at the beginning of the 
McKinley administration was not nearly as trying as 
it had been eight years earlier, and with advancing years 
he seems to have been relieved somewhat of the 
importunity of office seekers, greatly to his satisfaction. 
Once in a while he would be called upon to make 
requests at the White House or the departments. 
He would always do what he could, though pleading 
lack of influence, as in the case of the Litchfield County 
clergyman who asked him to secure a boy's appoint- 
ment to Annapolis, and to whom he replied : 

I do not think that I have any considerable influence 
with this administration in such matters. I have tried 
in times past, the best I knew how, to obtain such appoint- 
ments from the President to the naval academy or to 
West Point, and always without success. I do not belong 
to the crowd of politicians, and when a man who will not 
place himself under obligations, encounters those who are 
willing to render favors when they ask favors, he has very 



532 Orville H. Piatt 

little of that thing which is popularly called "influence." 
Nevertheless, I will do all I can. 

He was chary of promises and scrupulously re- 
luctant to take credit for results to which he felt he had 
not effectively contributed, as when he refused to 
accept the thanks of a New York clergyman whose 
brother had received an appointment, "because it 
came about independent of any effort upon my part," 
and that, too, though he had written many letters and 
been at considerable pains to enable the young man to. 
qualify. 

While out of patience with the whole scheme of patron- 
age, Mr. Piatt was jealous of the claims of his State 
to proportionate representation in the public service. 
When President McKinley succeeded President Cleve- 
land he strove religiously to secure for Connecticut a 
continuance, under Republican administration, of the 
more important offices which had been enjoyed by 
Connecticut Democrats — not, however, with any great 
success. During the Roosevelt administration the 
consul-general at Ottawa, a Connecticut man, resigned, 
and the President promptly named a new consul- 
general without conferring with the Connecticut 
Senators. "I have not yet learned who the President 
appointed," Mr. Piatt wrote to a Connecticut Repre- 
sentative, ' ' but I do not take it kindly that immediately 
and without waiting to hear from me, he should fill that 
place. I propose to have it out with him when I see 
him!" 

A Connecticut candidate for general appraiser in 
New York was told that he might make application for 
the position of assistant appraiser, but that he would 
need the endorsement of Senator Thomas C. Piatt. 



Politics and Patronage 533 

This filled the Connecticut Piatt with wrath. He 
wrote to Secretary Shaw: 

I want to say that I do not think it necessary that a man, 
whose residence is in Connecticut, should be required 
either to show that he belongs to the Republican organiza- 
tion in New York or that he has obtained the endorsement 
of Senator Piatt of New York, as a condition of appoint- 
ment. The State of Connecticut is as much within the 
customs district of New York as is the State of New York, 
and the appraiser's duties affect business in Connecticut, 
the same as in New York. I do not acknowledge the 
right of Senator Piatt to control these appointments. If 

you would be willing to appoint Mr. on his merits 

and endorsements, and from what you know, and have 
learned of him, I think my recommendation should be just 
as potential as that of Senator Piatt of New York. I do 
not think that any of the appointments connected with the 
New York custom-house ought to be considered political 
appointments ; I beheve that they should be made on purely 
business principles, and for the benefit of the service, rather 
than for the benefit of any political organization. 

When the same man, having received the appoint- 
ment, asked his advice about joining the Republican 
organization in New York, Mr. Piatt advised him not 
to do it : 

I presume I could take care of you in case of difficulty, 
better as a Connecticut man, than as a New York man. 
I imagine that backing from New York requires a lot of 
political subserviency— backing from Connecticut will not. 

It happened that on his very last call at the White 
House,— on March 25, 1905, a few hours before his final 
departure from Washington, the talk turned upon the 
subject of Connecticut's meagre representation in the 
public service. Under the Cleveland administration 
the State had been recognized by some of the choicest 



534 Orville H. Piatt 

appointments in the President's gift: Treasurer of the 
United States, Consul-General at London, Commissioner 
of Patents, and numerous consuls and minor officers. 
As these places became vacant, they had been filled 
gradually by appointments from other States. On 
returning to his rooms Mr. Piatt dictated the following 
letter to the President : 

Referring to our conversation this morning, you will 
realize that in all the years you have been President I 
have not pushed or begged for appointments. The result 
is, as I indicated this morning, that Connecticut has no 
foreign minister, no secretary of legation, no consul-general, 
no person connected with the departments who has to be 
confirmed by the Senate, with the exception of one — a two 
thousand dollar place in the land office. I think it is my 
fault; I should have been urgent and persistent, but I do 
not like to be. It is not because we have no good men in 
the State, though I do not think there is the usual pressure 
for office from Connecticut, but we are a million of people 
and more; we are a part of New England, though it seems 
to be forgotten over offices, and I really think it would 
be a good thing all around if Connecticut were recognized 
in some rather conspicuous way, all of which leads up 
to the suggestion that Mr. Lynde Harrison of New Haven, 
would, I think, be a very capable and accomplished foreign 
minister. He is a lawyer of sufficient fortune so that he 
does not care to continue practice. He is well informed 
both as to our own government and our foreign relations. I 
need not go on praising him, because I can say it all in a 
word — I think he is peculiarly well qualified for such a 
position. I would trust him in the most difficult one 
that could be selected. I hope the time may come when it 
can be brought about. 

This was the last letter which he addressed to the 
President. The appointment could not be made. 



CHAPTER XLI 

Connecticut's first citizen 

Successive Elections to Senate without Opposition — Lack of 
Personal Organization — Offer of Position as Chief-Justice of 
Supreme Court of Errors — Rejects Suggestion of Selection 
as President pro tcm, 

** A LL the politics of Connecticut," Mr. Piatt once 
i\ observed grimly, ' ' seems to depend on which is 
going to die first, Hawley or I." The remark disclosed 
a humorous insight into a situation creditable alike to 
Senators and State. It is true there were those who 
would gladly have represented the State in the Senate, 
but so great was the regard for Piatt that no one ever 
ventured to carry into the Legislature a contest for his 
place, and though Hawley had a harder time of it, the 
State always rallied to his support. When he first 
entered the Senate Mr. Piatt laid down a rule that so 
long as he remained there he would not meddle with the 
internal politics of Connecticut. He had an idea that 
he could best please the people of the State by serving 
them to the limit of his ability in Washington without 
bothering about political rivalries at home, and so he 
scrupulously abstained from anything which might 
lead to a suspicion that he was trying to interfere 
with local affairs. After entering the Senate he never 
asked for a State appointment or attempted to 
influence the State officers who had appointments to 
make. He carried this feeling even to the length of 

535 



536 Orville H. Piatt 

keeping hands off when his own re-elections were pend- 
ing ; and it may be doubted whether in any other State 
a United States Senator through so many years ever 
succeeded in holding his seat continuously for so long a 
time with less attention to the details of party manage- 
ment. It is true that from time to time some of those 
who looked ahead to remote contingencies were sus- 
pected of quietly laying their plans, and Mr. Piatt had 
a few friends at home who, watching developments at 
close range, kept him fairly well informed of what was 
going on, but true to his character, throughout his long 
career, he would not permit himself to be seriously 
disturbed by unfavorable rumors. There was never a 
time from the hour of his first nomination when he 
would not have accepted with philosophy his retirement 
from public life. Once, indeed, he was on the point 
of retiring of his own volition. This was in the third 
year of his service. He had been seriously ill and had 
been obliged to submit to an operation ; his wife was an 
invalid, and his financial affairs were sadly demoralized, 
as a result of debts incurred through the failure of 
the cutlery enterprise at Meriden. He had not yet 
attained to a position of great influence in Washington, 
and he was tormented with anxiety as to whether he 
could bear up under the burden of expense. He wrote 
to one or two intimates in Meriden telling them of his 
wish to resign, not with a view, apparently, of asking 
their advice, but simply that they might be forewarned 
of what was to come. It was only after strong urging 
from them that he was induced to reconsider his 
determination and continue until the end of his term. 
By that time his mood had undergone a change; he 
had become more firmly grounded in his position; he 
was assured of the undivided support of his State, 



Connecticut's First Citizen 537 

and he accepted with gratitude the unanimous nomina- 
tion which the RepubHcan caucus gave him. Thence- 
forward, while he sometimes expressed a longing for the 
freedom and easier conditions of private life, he realized 
that he had found his life's work in the Senate. In 1888, 
in 1892, and again in 1896, there were intimations in 
influential quarters that he would be an acceptable 
candidate for President, but he did not let himself be 
deluded into considering such a remote contingency, 
any more than he was tempted by the bait of the Vice- 
Presidency which was also dangled before his eyes. 
In 1889, while he was serving his second term, the 
office of Chief- Justice of the Supreme Court of Errors 
of Connecticut became vacant and Governor Bulkeley 
offered him the place, which after a few days' con- 
sideration he declined.^ 

After the election of 1890, which resulted disastrously 
to the Republican cause throughout the United States, 
it was found that the Connecticut Legislature remained 
Republican by a bare majority. As Mr. Piatt's second 
term was to expire on March 4, 1891, there was more 
or less conjecture as to whether his chances of re- 
election would be affected by the narrow party margin. 

> His letter of declination to Governor Bulkeley was dated 
March 9, 1889 : 

"When in Washington recently you wished to know whether I 
would entertain favorably the suggestion that you might desire 
to nominate me to the office of Chief- Justice of the Supreme Court 
of Errors, and I asked a few days in which to consider the matter. 
I have given the matter much careful thought, and my conclusion 
is that it would be unwise to accept the position; and in this deci- 
sion I am supported by the opinion of the few friends to whom I 
feel at liberty to speak. 

'•I assure you I am not insensible of the high honor which would 
be conferred by the appointment, and I shall always fully appre- 
ciate the compliment of being thought worthy to receive it." 



538 Orville H. Piatt 

There was nothing very definite in the talk, but it 
attracted the attention of his friends. After election 
he went to Washington for a few days, from whence, 
in the excess of caution, on November nth, he wrote 
to John R. Buck : 

Before I came away I heard a good deal of talk from 
Democratic sources to the effect that I could not be re- 
elected in this Legislature. Loomis, who makes his head- 
quarters at the Murray Hill Hotel, said so, very positively, 
to General Hawley. I saw it in an article in the New 
Haven Register, and a number of Democrats in New Haven 
have said in a mysterious way that it might be a Republi- 
can, but it would not be Piatt. Whether there is enough 
of this smoke to indicate a fire anywhere, I do not know. 
I have not been able to run it down to any definite conclu- 
sion. Some say that there are Republicans elected who 
are my enemies and will not vote for me. I do not know of 
any such. Others say that the liquor dealers control cer- 
tain Republicans in the Legislature, and that they do not 
want me. Others say that Sam Fessenden controls a few 
votes, and that they will stand out till the rest of the 
party goes to Fessenden. I am satisfied that there is 
nothing to this latter story. 

But it occurs to me that you, being intimate with Fred 
Brown and George Sumner, and Cleveland, might find 
out what it is that these Democrats appear to be basing 
their hopes on. Of course, the situation — three or four 
or six majority — suggests possibilities, but I cannot 
discover where they are and should like to get at what 
it is the Democrats are thinking about. 

A month later, on December 8, 1890, he takes up 
the question again in a letter to Henry T. Blake of 
New Haven: 

You speak of the present emergency in the senatorial 
question. There is none as far as I am concerned. If the 



Connecticut's First Citizen 539 

Republicans in the Legislature desire some other person 
than me for Senator, there will be no more happy man in 
the State than I ; and if any Republicans are false enough 
to the party to join with the Democrats in determining 
who the Senator shall be, it will trouble other Republicans 
in the State a great deal more than it will me. I am weary 
of the life here, and but for the fact that the unity of the 
party depends upon my being a candidate for re-election I 
should be out of it. 

This was as near as even rumor came to displacing 
Mr. Piatt until the day of his death, save only on one 
occasion. But it was inevitable that rumor should 
once in a while suggest possibilities. That he was not 
asleep to these is shown in a letter which he wrote to 
Samuel Fessenden on January 25, 1893: 

I do not suppose that you are responsible for any of 
the statements that appear in newspapers relating to the 
senatorship. But I saw in the Bridgeport Farmer an 
article which purports to be an expression of your views 
by one of your most intimate friends, in which he says, 
after speaking of the fact that the reason for your re- 
fusal to be a candidate was that you wanted to make more 
money before you became one, "that four years from now 
Senator Piatt's term expires. By that time Mr. Fessenden 
will be virtually independent of a Senator's salary. I know 
as an absolute fact that Senator Piatt is pledged to him, 
and, if the Legislature is at that time Republican, Sam 
Fessenden will be next Senator from this State." Of 
course, it is unnecessary for me to say that I have made no 
pledges whatever, but I do not wish to let a statement of 
that sort, which comes under my observation, go without 
any notice from me. It is better to speak of it when I see 
it than to leave any opportunity for misunderstandings 
in the future. 



540 Orville H. Piatt 

It was during this period of his career that he was 
called upon to make a decision which he believed would 
have an important effect upon his political future. The 
Democratic majority in the Senate had been wiped out 
by the elections of 1894 and the Senate was to be 
reorganized on a Republican basis in the session of 
1895-6. Senator Manderson of Nebraska who had been 
President pro tern prior to the period of Democratic 
supremacy was about to leave public life and it was 
necessary to make a new selection. The names con- 
sidered for the place were those of three New England 
veterans: Piatt, Hoar, and Frye. Had the Connecticut 
Senator cared for the position he would undoubtedly 
have been chosen, as he was regarded with especial 
favor by the western men who held the balance of 
power; but, while the office carried a certain prestige, 
his ambition did not lie that way. He was in line for 
the Finance Committee — a designation which it might 
require some effort to secure, but which would give him 
the opportunity to participate in framing a protective 
tariff in the event of complete Republican success the 
following year. On June 24, 1895, he wrote from 
Meriden to John H. Flagg: 

I note what you say about being elected President 
pro tempore of the Senate, but I think you have forgotten 
what I want, and that is to go on the Finance Committee. 
I should care nothing for being President pro tempore, but 
should care very much for a place on the Finance Committee. 
I know I could easily be elected President pro tempore, 
and I know I cannot easily get on the Finance Committee. 
The people of the State of Connecticut would take no in- 
terest or very little interest in my getting the former, but 
would see the necessity of continuing me in the Senate if 
I could get the latter. Dubois and Hansbrough and Petti- 



Connecticut's First Citizen 541 

grew want to get rid of me on the Indian and Territorial 
Committees. Hence their willingness and anxiety to 
make me President pro tempore, but I have told them what 
I want, and though they are silver men, they are disposed to 
help me on to the Finance Committee. They love me well 
enough, perhaps, but what they want is a clear track for 
Pettigrew to be Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs , 
Hansbrough Chairman of the Committee on Territories, and 
Dubois Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, which 
he can have if Pettigrew gets the Chairmanship of Indian 
Affairs. This is the situation, and I am inclined to think 
it is such that I may get the Finance Committee, although 
it would make three on it from New England. At any 
rate I don't want to be President pro tempore in any event. 

He adhered to this determination, even though other 
Republican Senators assured him that they saw no 
reason why he should not have both places. 



CHAPTER XLII 

THE FESSENDEN EPISODE 

An Evanescent Disturbance — Proposed for Vice-President — Refuses 

to Make a Personal Canvass for Re-election — Election 

in 1897 — Political Expenditures. 

HOWEVER little temptation there may have been 
in the proposal to make him President pro tern, 
Mr. Piatt was up against a somewhat more serious 
embarrassment in 1896, through a suggestion that he 
be placed on the ticket with McKinley in the event of 
McKinley's nomination for President. No public man 
was ever more free from the weaknesses of political 
ambition, and therefore no man was ever less likely to 
be beguiled by intimations which to others might have 
proved seductive. He never cherished the slightest 
inclination toward the vice-presidency, and so there 
was no taint of personal vanity to interfere with a 
clear perception of the motives underlying the sugges- 
tion of his name. He recognized it first as a part of 
the tactics of the friends of Mr. McKinley to weaken 
the support of Mr. Reed in New England, and second 
as a clever diversion for the politicians of his own 
State who would have welcomed the vacant Senate 
seat resulting from so distinguished a compliment. It 
happened that this mild exploitation of the chances for 
a Connecticut vice-president was coincident with the 
only tangible movement which was ever made within 

542 



The Fessenden Episode 543 

the party in behalf of another aspirant for Mr. Piatt's 
seat in the Senate — a movement which was doomed to 
a brief existence but which while it continued caused 
considerable annoyance. It was the only time in his 
career when the Senator came to the point of seriously 
considering an organization among his friends to safe- 
guard his political interests. The State Convention 
to select delegates to the Republican National Conven- 
tion was held in the spring of 1896, and Mr. Piatt's 
third term as Senator w^as to expire on March 4, 1897. 
Even before the meeting of the spring convention, there 
began to spread an understanding that Samuel Fessen- 
den, the Connecticut member of the Republican 
National Committee, would be a formidable factor 
in an approaching contest for the senatorship. Mr. 
Fessenden was entrusted with the management of 
Reed's canvass in Connecticut. Mr. Piatt, while per- 
sonally inclined toward Reed, had scrupulously re- 
frained, according to his custom, from influencing the 
choice of delegates. John Addison Porter, afterwards 
the President's secretary, through his newspaper, the 
Hartford Post, was ardently urging the nomination of 
McKinley. The question of the presidency was in- 
volved in a measure with that of the senatorship. 
Through the w^inter intimations of the activity of 
Fessenden's supporters kept coming to Piatt. He 
began at last to show signs of interest. On March 
16, 1896 he wrote to H. Wales Lines: 

I hear of a good many places in which Mr. Fessenden's 
friends are trying to select candidates to be nominated 
for the Senate and House of Representatives. ... It is a 
little difficult to know just what I ought to be doing or my 
friends for me, in view of the aggressive work which the 
Fessenden men have taken up. I do not think they 



544 Orville H. Piatt 

are meeting with the encouragement which they expected, 
and yet they are ploughing around as best they can. There 
is a meeting of the State Committee next Wednesday even- 
ing, I think, to determine when the convention to nominate 
delegates to St. Louis is to be held in Connecticut. I should 
like to be a mouse in the wall at that meeting, for I think 
there will be indications of what the crowd think of the 
situation. 

Early in February we find him writing to his old 
friend, John R. Buck of Hartford 

I judge that the political pot boils a little more than 
of late in Connecticut on account of the selection of dele- 
gates to St. Louis. I am not trying to nominate a Presi- 
dent, and if I were a delegate to the convention, I do not 
know at this moment what I would do. But I do hear 
various rumors of an effort on the part of Fessenden to 
control the selection of delegates and to be able to cast 
the vote of Connecticut in conjunction with that of New 
York and Pennsylvania under the lead of Piatt and Quay. 
I don't place much dependence on that, for I don't believe 
that any one can name delegates in Connecticut and get 
them. But as I say, I am not mixing or meddling with 
this matter. 

With all the spread of rumor and suspicion he did not 
feel free to absent himself from Washington during 
the session of Congress, and besides he had certain 
scruples against even an appearance of canvassing for 
his own re-election. To an invitation to speak at 
Danbury he responded on March 12th, in a letter to 
C. H. Merritt of that town: 

I don't want to come to Danbury in a way in which 
any one could say that I was electioneering for myself. I 
can't do that. I never have and I am not going to begin 



The Fessenden Episode 545 

now. Just the way I feel about the matter of re-election 
is this. If the people of the State, by which I mean the 
Republican people, want me to serve another term I shall 
be very thankful and glad. If they want some one else 
rather than me, I should try to accept their verdict as 
philosophically as might be. My own belief about it is, 
and I think I may say so without being charged with ego- 
tism, that a very large proportion of the Republican voters in 
Connecticut wish me to be returned. If that is so, I want 
their wishes to find expression and not to be thwarted by 
any kind of political wire-pulling. I feel a certain degree 
of assurance that if the people who want me to come back 
take sufficient interest in it to let their wishes be reflected 
in the election of members of the Legislature, there will not 
be much of a contest. The only thing that I fear is that 
they may feel as if there was no occasion to do or say very 
much, expecting the matter will come out all right anyway. 
I can't make a personal campaign of it. I must do the best 
I can here and elsewhere for the party and State and leave 
the matter pretty much to the people to say what they 
want. If I do this I shall meet the result with a feeling of 
self-respect which I should not have if I went into a political 
scramble in the State to secure the nomination and election 
of representatives who were favorable to me. I thmk you 
can appreciate my feelings in this respect. 

A few days later he wrote to John H. Flagg: 

Mr. Fessenden's particular friends are beginning to 
inaugurate quite an active campaign, laying plans already 
to nominate in the different towns and senatorial districts 
men upon whom they think they can rely to be friendly to 
Mr. Fessenden, and I suppose that at present there is 
nothing for me to do but to let that sort of thing go on. I 
can't stop it, and I know of no way to meet it actively. 
If the sentiment in my favor is really earnest and pro- 
nounced, it seems as if it would assert itself in caucuses and 

3S 



t 



546 Orville H. Piatt 

conventions, and bring the Fessenden plans to naught. 
If it is a languid feeling or kind of limited endorsement 
sort of a thing, the active wire-pulling may overcome it. 
At any rate I can only sit by and watch and wait. ... I 
have settled down to the conviction and conclusion that 
from now on until the question comes of my election in 
the Legislature it will be the same thing. No active organi- 
zation in my behalf, a very active organization on the part 
of Mr. Fessenden and his friends, the whole thing depend- 
ing on whether they can override public sentiment or not. 

That he was watching closely the developments of 
affairs at home, however, is shown by his corre- 
spondence. To John R. Buck of Hartford he wrote, 
on March i6th, a letter which betrayed an intelligent 
understanding of the drift: 

I am anxious to know whether you yourself want to 
go to the St. Louis Convention. If you do, I want to 
have you, though I don't know anything what your views 
are about who ought to be nominated, but it would not 
make any difference if I did, because I do want some one 
to go to the Convention from Connecticut who will have 
as much influence and strength with the delegation 
as you would be sure to have. I don't want the enemy, 
Fessenden, that is, to have complete control of the Con- 
necticut vote at St. Louis. Not that I think he is going 
to have, but I cannot bear this talk that Quay controls 
the vote of Pennsylvania, Piatt controls the vote of New 
York, and Fessenden controls the vote of Connecticut. I 
see it more and more until I am sick at heart, and am not 
really in condition to swear very much about it. I know 
just as well as I know anything that, unless Reed can 
make the nomination, there will be an attempt made by 
Fessenden to bring me out for the vice-presidency. No 
one knows how this nomination is going to turn, but if 
it does go to a western man, he will try to play that game. 



/ 



The Fessenden Episode 547 

and his relations with Piatt and Quay are close enough to 
make it dangerous. I want some one in that delegation 
who can speak for me and speak loud if occasion demands it. 
I find that the Fessenden pushers are pretty vigor- 
ous and somewhat aggressive but are meeting with rebuff 
and refusal in quarters they did not expect. . , . You 
know how philosophically I am sitting here and how 
philosophically I will sit by my hearthstone in the Adiron- 
dacks if I can get away from here. Still I like to hear 
what is going on. 

It was at this stage of the proceedings that the Hart- 
ford Post published an editorial voicing the casual 
expressions through the State that Mr. Piatt would 
make an admirable Vice-President and calling upon the 
Republicans of Connecticut to work to that end. Mr. 
Piatt perceived immediately the real purpose of the 
proposal. He wrote to his son James on March 30th, 
enclosing the editorial : 

Did you see this? The question is what to do about 
it — how it can best be nipped in the bud. I think you can 
tell Tom Warnock to say something in his paper to-morrow 
to the effect that I would not be a candidate for Vice-Presi- 
dent under any circumstances and that the Republicans 
of the State are not to be diverted from their determination 
to run me for the Senate by any such suggestion. That 
is about the way I think I should put it, but you will be 
the judge. There is a lot of that thing going on around the 
State. I cannot deny it by saying to the New York 
papers, to the Courant, and other such papers that I am 
not and will not be a candidate, but you can say it. 

The Hartford Courant promptly responded to the 
editorial of the Post, and other newspapers also handled 
the question in the same way. To Charles Hopkins 



548 Orville H. Piatt 

Clark, editor of the Courant, Mr. Piatt wrote on March 
31st: 

I am very much obliged for the article in the Courant 
of yesterday morning and for the way in which you treated 
the embarrassing suggestion of the Post. I have been 
aware of a proposed movement to bring me out as a candi- 
date for Vice-President for some time, but thought that it 
would probably come at the time of the convention in case 
a western man should be nominated. 

Two classes of people have been at work at it: The 
Fessenden men, in his interest solely, and the McKinley 
men, with the idea that it might help to get a McKinley 
delegation. An embarrassing feature of it has been that 
so many of my warm friends look at it as if such a possibility 
would confer additional honor upon me. 

I think you treated the matter admirably, and I want you 
to know how much I appreciate it. 

On the same day he wrote to H. Wales Lines, 
going a little more closely into the political history 
of the day: 

From this distance I can't see whether things are working 
well or ill for me. This Vice-President business has been 
a very shrewdly contrived idea for some time, and has 
been worked for all it is worth. ... Of course it is en- 
gineered by the Fessenden men, and Porter's object in it 
was not so much to help Fessenden as to help McKinley, 
and the unpleasant thing about it, after all, is that a good 
many people who are good friends of mine can't understand 
but that it would be a very welcome thing to me if I could 
be nominated for Vice-President. That is the matter 
which has troubled me. I have had to talk and write to 
people who are almost as enthusiastic friends of mine as you 
are to convince them that it would not be a great thing if I 
could be nominated for that office. The Hartford Post 



The Fessenden Episode 549 

article embarrasses me pretty badly here. . . . Reed 
understands Fessenden and his movements pretty well. 
But at the same time he became very much alarmed and 
did not understand how such a thing could be done without 
my consent. He wanted me to say, myself, through the 
newspapers that I was not a candidate for Vice-President, 
and that I wanted to be returned to the Senate and that 
was all I wanted. Charlie Russell thought I had better do 
it for the reason that while eastern Connecticut is solid for 
me this talk about nominating me for Vice-President had 
gone through that section of the State and that even my 
friends thought it would be a great thing. I telegraphed 
James yesterday to know what he thought about it, and 
he said No, which was my judgment all the while as I told 
Russell. ... It would seem as if the performance was 
pretty thoroughly exposed. At the same time you can 
see how nervous Reed would be and is, and it is not easy 
to satisfy him that I ought not to say something myself. 

To Charles W. Pickett, an editor of the New Haven 
Leader, he wrote on April i, 1896: 

Of course you know just how I feel about the senatorship. 
If the people of Connecticut are wiUing to do me further 
honor I hope they will re-elect me Senator. That would 
be very gratifying to me. I do not desire any other office. 
I have made no personal effort looking toward a re-election. 
I must leave that to the judgment of the Republicans of 
Connecticut. It may possibly seem singular to you, but I 
should not respect myself if I attempted to make a cam- 
paign organization for the purpose of securing a re-election. 
I was reading only last evening the biography of a public 
man of whom the author said: "He never condescended to 
the despicable pursuit of self-advertisement," and I thought 
that I would rather have that said of me when I am gone 
than to secure any pubHc honor by resorting to the methods 
and means which politicians sometimes adopt to secure 



550 Orville H. Piatt 

success. I don't mean by this that I don't appreciate 
everything that is said or done in my behalf by those who 
think that I ought to be re-elected. I assure you that I 
do appreciate such support more perhaps than a man would 
who was trying to re-elect himself. 

With regard to Mr. Fessenden I have no quarrel with 
him, nor indeed, a controversy. I have been pleased in 
that so far as the matter has been talked about I have not 
heard that he or his friends have said any unkind things 
about me. And I certainly would have no feeling of un- 
kindness towards him or towards those who would like 
to advance his interests. I have never quite thought that 
he was dead in earnest about desiring to secure the place 
I now occupy. Some things made me think that his 
present ambition lies rather in another direction. 

The canvass was not altogether free from personal 
criticism. One report had it that Mr. Piatt was guilty 
of nepotism, and that he had used his position to secure 
the appointment of relatives and personal friends to 
office. To a New Britain correspondent who informed 
him of this report, he wrote on April 9th : 

A man must be pretty hard pushed to make the objec- 
tion to me that I put relatives or even friends in office. 
So far as I know there is but one person in office in the 
United States who is a relative of mine. The enrolling 
clerk of the Senate is a second cousin, but was appointed 
specially on the ground of his capacity for that particular 
place, upon the recommendation of the Senators from New 
York, he being a resident of Albany. I think that I can 
say that I have never recommended the appointment of 
a man to office from whose appointment I expected to 
derive the slightest personal advantage. I am making and 
shall make no canvass or contest to be returned to the 
Senate again, yet I confess I should like to be. It would be 
extremely gratifying to me to have another term, but the 



The Fessendcn Episode 551 

matter must take care of itself. ... I could not respect 
myself if I resorted to the methods .so common at the pre- 
sent day to secure re-election. . . . Taking the State by 
and large, I think that there is quite a decided feeling that 
I ought to be returned. If such should be the result, I 
should be, as I have said, very thankful. If not I shall 
try to acquiesce with what philosophy I may be able to 
muster. 

The sentiment for Piatt's return was so pronounced 
that the Fessenden agitation subsided rapidly after the 
meeting of the State Convention, and by the end of 
May there was so little anxiety among Mr. Piatt's 
friends, that he had begun to regard the earlier rumors 
as exaggerations. In the last week of May, writing to 
his friend, John Coe, who was having an outing in 
London, he said he was not worrying about it. "If 
they don't send me back here, you and I will set up a 
partnership and see how well we can enjoy ourselves, 
and I should like that quite as well as being in the 
Senate." 

But there was never really any cause for any one to 
worry. As soon as it became known that another 
name had been suggested there was such an expression 
of opinion in favor of continuing him in the service 
that all doubt of the choice of the State was removed 
on the spot. Mr. Fessenden was informed pointedly 
that he had better get out of the way, and he con- 
cluded to defer his ambitions till a more favorable 
opportunity. In July the Senator wrote to Isaac H. 
Bromley of the New York Tribune: 

The whole situation seems to have been absolutely 
cleared up and every one, even Mr. Fessenden's friends, to 
be happy over the prospect of my return to the Senate 



552 Orville H. Piatt 

without opposition. That it is gratifying to me goes 
without saying, though I reahze the fact that when the 
years creep on a man as on you and me the natural thing 
is for the procession to pass by; but I hope that I may 
have vigor and strength both of body and mind to do 
effective work for some years to come. 

When the Legislature convened in the following 
January, Mr. Piatt was renominated as usual by ac- 
clamation, and duly elected without the expenditure 
of effort or money. * 

' In January, 1897, Senator Piatt made the following affidavit 
of expenses incurred by him: " The undersigned, Orville H. Piatt of 
Meriden, Connecticut, having been on Wednesday, January 20, 
1897, declared elected to the Senate of the United States from the 
State of Connecticut, for the term of six years, commencing March 
4, 1897, makes this affidavit in compliance with Section 2 of the 
act entitled: 'An act to punish corrupt practices at elections,' 
approved July ninth, eighteen hundred and ninety-five. Whether 
the section in question requires a statement giving the disburse- 
ments, expenses, and contributions in the campaign resulting in 
the election of Senators and Representatives, the undersigned is in 
doubt and therefore covers both periods. 

" During the campaign resulting in the election of Senators and 
Representatives to the Legislature I was under no expense, made 
no disbursements or contributions, except that as I was engaged 
in delivering addresses in different parts of the State I paid my 
personal expenses in travelling and staying at hotels. Of these 
expenses I kept no memorandum and can only say that they did 
not exceed the sum of one hundred dollars ($100.00). I have 
been at no expense, have made no disbursements or contributions 
whatever since the election of Senators and Representatives up to 
and including the time of my election. 

"Dated at Washington, D. C, January 27, 1897." 

It could never be truthfully charged that Mr. Piatt's successive 
elections to the Senate were accompanied with an undue expendi- 
ture of money. It is doubtful whether from first to last the 
entire cost was as much as might reasonably be expended in a single 
campaign for a minor elective office. After the election of 1903, 
H. Wales Lines who had in charge the finances of the original 
canvass in 1879, wrote him: 

"Recently I found some memorandums which I made in January 



The Fessenden Episode 553 

His most memorable service was yet to come. 

1879, from which I pick out a few that may be of interest. I find 
there a record of a cash contribution by Charles Parker of $200 
and I. C. Lewis of $225 for expenses of the canvass; besides a 
memorandum of a number of different men who paid their own 
expenses as they went to other towns seeking to interest men in 
the support of you for Senator. One of the items of expense seems 
to have been $2 for the rent of Armory Hall for a reception. Re- 
ceptions cost more nowadays. I think this must have been held 
with no cards, no music, and no flowers. " 

When his name was first brought forward in 1878, a friend in 
a distant State wrote offering financial aid, only to receive the 
reply: "Don't care for a cent from anybody. If I am elected it 
will be because I am wanted." 



CHAPTER XLIII 
A state's crowning tribute 

Election in 1903 — Address to Legislature — A Senator's Duty — 
Reception by the State at Hartford. 

COMING at the close of six historic years, Senator 
Piatt's entrance upon a fifth successive term was 
like a coronation. For the first time Connecticut had 
the opportunity to pay so striking a compliment to one 
of her sons, and the people whose credit he had held 
high in Washington for a quarter of a century vied in 
doing honor. Valuable as his service had been hither- 
to he had not yet come before them clothed with so 
much distinction, for the term just coming to an end 
had given him a prestige which had attached to no 
other Connecticut representative in the nation's councils 
since the day of Roger Sherman. The election itself 
was a matter of form. The Republican caucus as usual 
made the nomination by acclamation, and the General 
Assembly went through the required ceremony of a 
ballot in which Mr. Piatt received 169 out of 170 Re- 
publican votes, a tobacco farmer from Barkhamsted 
happily selecting this opportunity to express his dis- 
satisfaction with the course of the Senator with regard 
to Cuban reciprocity. 

Mr. Piatt was in Hartford, having come on from 
Washington on the announcement of his nomination, 
and after the ballot had been declared he appeared 

554 



A State's Crowning Tribute 555 

before the joint convention which rose to greet him, 
remaining standing until he had taken his seat. He 
was deeply moved as he began to speak : 

I desire through you Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, and 
you gentlemen who constitute the General Assembly, to say 
to the people of Connecticut in homely, heartfelt, Anglo- 
Saxon phrase, I thank you. Through these words the 
heart speaks as it can through no other. No adjective can 
add to their meaning, no other words can be more expres- 
sive of my emotion. If repetition could emphasize them, I 
would say again and again — I thank you. 

He spoke of the twenty-four years during which he had 
been a representative of the State of Connecticut in the 
Senate of the United States, a period covering years 
of such marvellous national progress and development 
"that we may without boasting, say that the body 
of which you have constituted me a member surpasses 
in dignity, in responsibility, and in its influence upon the 
destinies of mankind, any legislative body in the world." 
He did not attribute his great honor solely to any 
personal achievement. He believed that in the en- 
joyment of this long continued confidence he had been 
favored by conditions and circumstances which had not 
so favorably affected his predecessors. He had followed 
in the footsteps of able, forceful, and great Senators 
whose term of service had been shortened by death or 
changed political conditions. Senators who had made 
a State of limited area and resources respected and 
potential in national affairs, men who had thought 
deeply on problems of government, who more than any 
others laid the foundations upon which a noble and 
enduring structure had been built, who had been 
exemplars and models for those who followed them. : 



556 Orville H. Piatt 

To have followed such men, to have served the State 
in such a capacity now for twenty-four years, is an honor 
which I cherish above every other honor, and above all 
other possessions. If I have been ambitious, it fully 
fills the measure of that ambition, and to have been chosen 
for a further service of six years is an honor which far ex- 
ceeds that ambition and places me under obligations which 
I hope I realize, but which I fear I may be unable to fully 
discharge. 

He dwelt upon what he believed to be the true 
conception of a Senator's duty to his State: 

A Senator in the Congress of the United States must be 
more than a mere representative of his State. States, like 
individuals, have their immediate rights and interests, but, 
like individuals, these rights and interests are of necessity 
limited by the welfare of the whole body politic, and the 
welfare and greater interests of the whole nation must be 
subserved as well as the interests and welfare of a particular 
State. It is by no means easy to draw the line of action 
between what seems to be for the advancement of a State 
and what seems to be for the advancement of the whole 
nation, but of this I am sure, that what is really and truly 
for the best good of the nation is most truly for the interest 
of a single constituent State. If the interest of the State 
clashes with the interest of the United States, its pro- 
gress and development will be best subserved by not insist- 
ing too vigorously upon its supposed rights. I regard that 
phrase in the preamble of our Constitution in which one of 
the objects of its adoption is said to be the promotion of 
the general welfare as the keynote of that Constitution, and 
thus while a Senator should never lose sight of the interests 
of the State which he represents, he should always have in 
view the welfare, happiness, and the best interests of that 
great body of American citizens which constitutes the 
strength and glory of our nation. The individual must 



A State's Crowning Tribute 557 

sometimes forego the assertion of what he deems to be 
pecuHarly his own right for the greater benefit of the society 
of which he is a part. A State must sometimes forego the 
assertion of its immediate right in order that the rights of 
all the States as they constitute the nation shall be regarded. 
A true representative, whether in the State Legislature 
or in the National Legislature, will represent to the best of 
his ability the views of the constituency which elected him, 
and if he cannot gain the assent of the great body of 
representatives to his views he will gracefully and cheer- 
fully surrender them to the views of the majority. The 
majority must rule. 

His closing words were scriptural in their exalted 
dignity: 

As I came to this Capitol, I looked up and saw flying 
over it, side by side with the national flag, the flag of our 
own loved State, and as I saw the three fruitful vines and 
read its old Latin motto I felt that more than in any other 
State, the armorial bearings of the flag proclaimed the faith 
of the fathers and still represented the faith of their de- 
scendants. If the fruited vines refer, as has been surmised, 
to the three original towns of Hartford, Windsor, and 
Wethersfield, as vines of the Lord's own planting, the faith 
which inscribed them on our shield and our flag has indeed 
been realized, for in the establishment of those towns was 
first proclaimed to the world, so far as I know, in a written 
constitution, the great doctrine of the right of the people 
to govern themselves, and that principle is gradually but 
surely possessing the earth. From the banks of our beauti- 
ful river that idea went forth conquering and to conquer. 
If in a wider sense the motto Qui transtulit sustinet re- 
fers to the whole body of the people who had fled from 
oppressions and persecution as the special object of the 
Almighty's care, that faith has indeed been justified in 
the wonderful Providence which has sustained and carried 



558 Orville H. Piatt 

on the government which may be traced to those begin- 
nings on the banks of the Connecticut. Our shield is in- 
deed the shield of faith, and until we depart from the faith 
of the fathers we may rely with confidence upon the 
sustaining grace and power of the Almighty. He who 
brought us over still sustains us. 

When these formal ceremonies were over and Mr. 
Piatt had returned to Washington, the members of the 
General Assembly conceived an unprecedented compli- 
ment — a reception by the State of Connecticut to Sena- 
tor and Mrs. Piatt in which all citizens of the State were 
asked to participate. It was like the Senator to stipu- 
late that the plans be simple. He even asked the com- 
mittee which visited Washington to confer with him 
that it should be announced that evening dress would 
not be expected, so that none need feel ill at ease who 
might wish to attend. After the departure of the 
committee, he wrote to H. Wales Lines: 

Senators Cook and Paige have been down here to con- 
sult Mrs. Piatt and myself about the reception, and I have 
said that I would leave the matter to the good judgment of 
the committee, suggesting only that it shall be made not 
too elaborate or expensive; that it should be kept simple 
and democratic enough so that all who wish to do so would 
feel free to attend. We rather fixed on the twentieth of 
March for it. ... I have no doubt it will pass off nicely. 
I have a little bit of a dread of it, lest I should not appear 
just as I ought. I suppose this is born of my old country 
breeding, rather than society experience. 

Weeks were spent in preparation for the event. 
Over 6500 invitations were issued to friends of the 
Senator inside the State and out. It was made clear 
also that every citizen of Connecticut would be welcome, 



A State's Crowning Tribute 559 

and there was a gathering on the night of March 20th, 
which was the most memorable social function in the 
history of the State. Special trains brought to Hart- 
ford citizens of every county, and over 10,000 people 
crowded into the illuminated Capitol to do honor to the 
first citizen of the commonwealth, one who had out- 
lived personal envy and political rivalries. The leaders 
in politics, business, and the professions were on hand, 
and there was an outpouring of the plain people such as 
Hartford had never seen before. It was the most 
representative assemblage of the citizens of the whole 
State which has ever been known. For many hours the 
multitude passed before Mr. and Mrs. Piatt, while there 
arose from all over Connecticut and even beyond its 
borders a chorus of praise. Messages of congratula- 
tion came from the highest officials at Washington. 
A type of these was that from Senator Beveridge of 
Indiana : 

I admire Senator Piatt more than any man in public 
life. He is regarded among us in the Senate as our greatest 
constructive statesman. In my State of Indiana he has 
long been the ideal of American public life. I doubt 
if the utterances of any man have equal weight with the 
American people when he sees fit to present his views on 
any public question. 

Said the Hartford C our ant: 

We are not at all sure that Mr. Piatt knows even yet, 
after all these years, the real width, depth, and warmth of 
his State's liking for him. He will get additional light on 
the subject before bedtime. 

His visit to Hartford last fall was political. He came to 
take the chair in a party convention. The errand that 
brings him to the old capital city to-day is of a different 



56o Orville H. Piatt 

and more genial nature. He is the honored and beloved 
guest of the State — of all the people of the State. There 's 
no politics in this welcome; the bugles have sung truce. 
We are not Republicans and Democrats to-day; we are 
Connecticut folks trying to make Mr. Piatt of Connecticut 
(as the official reporters of the Senate call him) understand 
how proud we all are of our right and title in him. . . . 

Meriden has had a good citizen in him for fifty years and 
two. He has obeyed every order of duty; a soldier could 
do no more. He was diligent in the service of his town 
before he was called into the service of his State. From 
his first year in the chamber a conscientious, hard-working, 
painstaking Senator, he has grown and broadened and 
ripened into a leading Senator — great in influence, great 
in usefulness. His name is spoken with respect in distant 
States. Yet at home he is still the unfrilled Connecticut 
man, interested in local affairs, a friendly neighbor among 
neighbors, seeking and enjoying 

"the talk 
Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk 
Of the mind's business." 

Your free-spoken admirer in the White House is right, 
Senator Piatt. You are, as he forcibly says, a "Bully Old 
Boy. " Hartford is glad to have you here on this twentieth 
day of March, 1903; the legislators, state officers, judges, 
reverend clergy, learned physicians, poor but honest 
lawyers, and plain people won't do a thing to you. 

The words of the New Haven Leader were character- 
istic of many others : 

Last night's great reception was unique and without 
precedent in New England history. Never before has any 
public man or private citizen received such a distinctively 
personal tribute. 

Well may Senator Piatt feel proud of the honor done 



A State's Crowning Tribute 561 

him, and prouder still are the people of Connecticut that 
they have one whom they can justly accord the highest 
tributes of respect they are capable of expressing. 

It was expected that the reception would be a big 
one, but nobody anticipated such a pilgrimage to the 
capital city as last night taxed the railroads to the last 
available car of carrying capacity, and thronged the 
Capitol building with countless hundreds who came just 
to say, "I am heartily glad to see you. Senator, friend, and 
faithful public servant — Orville H. Platt. " 

Truly it may be said of Orville H. Platt: This man was 
born for the public good. 

A few days after his return to Washington, weary 
but rejoicing, he wrote to Senator Charles C. Cook, 
Chairman of the Reception Committee : 

I have had no real opportunity until now to express 
through you and your committee, to the Governor, State 
officers, and the Legislature, my deep appreciation of the 
honor conferred upon Mrs. Platt and myself by the splendid 
and enthusiastic reception given us at the Capitol on the 
twentieth of March. To be honored by the representatives 
of the good State of Connecticut, and by its people with 
so much unanimity, heartiness, and sincerity, touched my 
heart as nothing else could have done. It seemed to evi- 
dence the fact that by years of service I had succeeded in 
winning the confidence, respect, and esteem of my fellow 
citizens, than which nothing could more fully satisfy or 
please me. To have served the State of Connecticut as 
best I might for twenty-four years in the Senate of the 
United States, and to have been honored by election for an- 
other term of six years, is indeed something of which to 
be justly proud ; but to have been made to feel by such a 
T'eception that the people of the State trusted me and 
manifested toward me real affection, more than satisfies 
and gratifies me. I love Connecticut and its people. It has 
36 



562 Orville H. Piatt 

been a pleasure to represent and to serve the State, and 
that its people seem to love me, more than fills the measure 
of my highest ambition. I cannot in language express 
my sense of obligation, but I shall carry with me to my 
last hour, the feeling that I have been most highly honored. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

FRUITFUL YEARS 

The Last Phase — Ratification of Colombian Treaty — The Adiron- 
dacks — Special Session of 1903 — Pension Order 78 — Post- 
Office Scandals — Death of Mark Hanna — Nomination and 
Election of Roosevelt, 1904. 

BEGIRT with the affection of the people of his State, 
the aged Senator approached the end of his career. 
The short time he had remaining was to be the richest 
and ripest period of his Hfe, filled to the brim with 
achievement and honor. The special session of the 
Senate called in the spring of 1903 to consider the treaty 
with Colombia and the Cuban reciprocity treaty 
passed without incident. Both treaties were ratified, 
a condition being attached to the one with Cuba that 
it should not become effective without action by 
Congress. But the confinement of the session following 
the labors of the preceding winter had left the Senator 
in a bad way. He was more weary than he had 
realized, and he had no sooner reached Judea after the 
adjournment of the Senate than he was seized with an 
attack of acute indigestion similar to those from which 
he had suffered before, but more exhausting in its 
effects. His family and friends were alarmed by his 
condition and recognizing the inadequacy of ordinary 
remedies they hurried him north to the Adirondacks, 
the only place where he could hope to find relief. He 

563 



564 Orville H. Piatt 

went early in June accompanied by Mrs. Piatt and by 
Dr. Ford, his family physician. That trip to the 
Adirondacks undoubtedly prolonged his life, and when 
he returned to Connecticut six weeks later he was quite 
his old self, ready to attack the mass of work which had 
been accumulating. A few days at Kirby Comer and he 
was off with Mrs. Piatt to Senator Aldrich's summer home 
at Warwick to meet Aldrich, Allison, and Spooner, a sub- 
committee entrusted with the consideration of finan- 
cial legislation ; for since the pigeonholing of the Aldrich 
bill by Congress the world of business had been praying 
for speedy relief. The four elder statesmen remained 
at Warwick several days talking over not only financial 
measures but also other questions which were likely to 
come before Congress. President Roosevelt had given 
it out that he intended to call an extraordinary session 
to meet immediately after the November elections 
so as to enact a bill carrying the Cuban reciprocity 
treaty into effect before the movement of the sugar 
crop in December. Mr. Piatt was impressed with the 
idea that the session ought to be called earlier, if it 
were called at all, and he brought his associates to 
the same way of thinking. He felt that the financial 
question having overshadowed the Cuban question in 
the eyes of the business community, it was just as essen- 
tial to hasten action on one as on the other. After 
the meeting dissolved he took the matter up with the 
President and with others. To Mark Hanna he wrote : 

We would do no more and accomplish nothing any earlier 
by having a session begin November 9th than if we had no 
extra session. We have to organize committees in the 
Senate and in the House ; that would take probably all of 
November, and then we should be dawdling along through 
December until the Christmas recess without having 




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Fruitful Years 565 

arrived at anything in the way of legislation. If we could 
start by the fifteenth of October we might pass something 
both in relation to the Cuban treaty and financial matters. 
I confess I doubt it, but the early date gives us a chance, 
and I think the later one gives us no chance whatever. . . . 
I write this to you because I know that you will feel that 
it is a personal inconvenience, but you are Chairman of 
the National Committee, and we must get this financial 
subject out of the way as early as possible. If we do not 
get it out of the way before the regular session, the Demo- 
crats will delay it and organize their campaign in opposi- 
tion to it, keeping us discussing it until it will not come 
in time to do any good to the business interests of the 
country; it will precipitate a discussion of the only thing 
that they have for an issue, viz.: their allegations that the 
Republican party has but one object, and that is to promote 
the interests of Wall Street and the national banks. 

Hanna was having a hard fight at home "from foes 
without and within" and was not favorably inclined 
to an earlier meeting. He thought the introduction 
and consideration of a financial bill at the time of 
greatest activity might arouse a discussion which would 
create speculation as to the result and very seriously 
interfere with business, while as for the Cuban bill, 
if it could not be passed in the sixty days after the ist 
of November, he did not believe it could be passed at 
all. "With due deference to your great age, experience, 
and judgment," he wrote whimsically, "I submit 
these observations for your consideration." This 
epistolary passage with the Ohio Senator was an episode 
in an intimate correspondence which had been going on 
all summer and which continued after Mr. Piatt's 
return from his fishing club in Canada whither he 
went for a fortnight's outing at the conclusion of the 
Warwick meeting. Hanna was carrying on his fight 



566 Orville H. Piatt 

for re-election under the handicap of what proved to be 
his fatal illness. "I was very sorry to hear that you 
had an attack which necessitated your physician 
prescribing a period of rest for you and yet was not 
surprised," wrote Piatt early in September. "I do not 
know what this thing, which in these days we call 'acute 
indigestion,' is but I know that I had a twitch of it 
which was hard to recover from": 

I am intensely interested in your campaign. It does 
not seem possible that they can defeat your re-election but 

"For ways that are dark 
And for tricks that are vain 
The Heathen Chinee is peculiar." 

Dick has written me asking me to speak in your cam- 
paign. I would do it more gladly for you than for any 
man in the United States, but really I cannot risk it. I 
am seventy-six years old, and cannot endure the fatigue 
and labor of a campaign. After my warning of last spring 
I think I should break down under it. 

It was well that he spared himself and lived so much 
in the open air of the Adirondacks and-Canada that 
summer; for he was kept busy enough during the fall 
and winter and was subject to a strain which might have 
tested the powers of a much younger man. Washing- 
ton was beginning to buzz with the preliminaries of 
the Presidential campaign of 1904, and Mr. Piatt was 
one of the first to spring to the support of President 
Roosevelt, even at the risk of seeming unfaithful to 
his friend Mark Hanna. The Republican National 
Committee was called to meet in Washington early in 
December, and it was expected that the meeting would 
develop whatever opposition there might be to Roose- 
velt's nomination. A day or two before the time set 



Fruitful Years 567 

for the meeting Mr. Piatt announced himself in an 
interview as favoring the President's nomination, and 
he went so far as to declare that no other Republican 
could be elected. Throughout the winter he was the 
President's right arm at the Capitol, dealing stout 
blows in defence of the administration. The Panama 
revolution came in the fall, and when the Senate took 
it up he delivered an exhaustive speech in support 
of the way in which the President had handled it. He 
worked hard to get an early vote on the Cuban recipro- 
city bill. Mischievous Chinese legislation was intro- 
duced which would have alienated China at a critical 
time. He prevented the Senate from acting on it. 
An extravagant Pension bill was proposed, and Congress 
was in danger of being swept off its feet. Mr. Piatt 
was conversant with the question. At one time he had 
been a member of the Pensions Committee and its Acting 
Chairman. He deprecated the enactment of such far- 
reaching legislation, and he was one of those who 
advised the President to issue an executive order fixing 
at sixty-two years the age at which pensionable dis- 
ability to the extent of six dollars a month should be 
assumed, thus appeasing the desire for liberal treat- 
ment of the survivors of the war while preventing a 
more serious raid on the treasury. When Pension 
Order 78 became the target for Democratic batteries as 
the most notorious instance of executive encroachment 
upon the authority of Congress, he came to the defence 
of the administration, pointing out that Roosevelt had 
merely followed the example set by Cleveland in fixing 
the age for presumptive total disability at seventy-five 
and of McKinley in fixing at sixty-five the age at which 
half disability should be presumed. The thieving 
which had been going on in the Post-Office Department 



568 Orville H. Piatt 

for years came to light during the spring and summer 
of 1903. Mr. Piatt was deeply interested in the develop- 
ments, for he had long suspected crooked practices 
there. Postmaster-General Payne was his personal 
friend, and the appointment ot First Assistant Post- 
master-General Wynne, who instigated the inquiry, had 
been due primarily to his suggestion. After it was all 
over and the culprits on their way to the penitentiary 
the Democratic leaders awoke to the necessity of a drag- 
net investigation by Congress so as to keep the scandal 
alive through the campaign. Mr. Piatt, who was as 
familiar with all the circumstances as any one else at 
the Capitol, perceived the disingenuousness of this 
demand and begged the President not to yield to it; 
but the agitation was persisted in all through the winter 
of 1903-4 and on April 14th, in order that there might 
be no misunderstanding of his position he sent this note 
to the White House: 

Dear Mr. President: 

I would like you to know that I have not in the slightest 
degree changed my mind as to the inadvisability of a}iy 
sort of a postal investigation. 

Thus he was kept busy with a multipHcity of tasks 
through the long session. At times he wondered how 
long he could stand it. To Dr. Ford he wrote: 

I would like to have you account for my ability to do 
the amount of work I am doing here in Washington and 
have done all this winter. If any one had told me last 
October or November that I would come down here and 
take up my labors and work steadily every day, Sundays 
included, from — say half-past eight or nine in the morning 
until ten or eleven o'clock at night, on topics which are 
pending before Congress, I would have said that I could not 
do it, yet I have done it, and presume I shall go through to 



Fruitful Years 569 

the end. Whether I shall collapse then or not, I do not 
know. I do know that I shall want a good long rest. 

In the midst of it all came the great shock of Hanna's 
illness and death. This happened in the house in which 
the Platts were living, and the blow was as hard as if 
it had been in their own family. He was especially 
troubled that there should be so much parade and fuss 
about the funeral of his friend. On the morning of the 
ceremonies in the Senate, meditating over his cigar 
in his room, he suddenly asked: "If I should 
die here would you have one of these state funerals 
for me?" and when told that it would be expected 
he remarked: "Hope I shan't die here; hope I can go 
home to Connecticut for that. I should hate to be 
dragged around Washington in this w^ay, and I don't 
want to be!" 

By the time of the National Convention, he was 
completely worn out. Then came at Kirby Corner a 
renewal of the attack of the preceding year, and he 
hurried to the Adirondacks with Mrs. Piatt for what 
proved to be his last sojourn there. Late in August, he 
came back to civilization with the tonic of the woods 
in his blood. He wanted more rest but he had to take 
up the burdens of the campaign at once. Governor 
McLean, who was to have presided at the Republican 
State Convention in Hartford on September 13th, 
was ill and the senior Senator was drafted for the duty. 
He had to set out immediately on the preparation of his 
address on which he took especial pains, because he felt 
that the State "needed some stiff bracing." It was an 
exhaustive effort covering every point of Democratic 
attack upon the administration and proved to be one 
of the effective documents of the campaign, but it 
used up a lot of energy. 



570 Orville H. Piatt 

He wrote to Congressman Sperry a day or two before 
the Convention: 

I have agonized over the preparation of my speech 
which has gone to the printers. I am not satisfied with it. 
I never am when I have to prepare a speech for pubhcation. 
There is no inspiration in making a speech at your desk — 
it is Hke pumping water out of a dry well. When you get 
up and look an audience in the face you can say something, 
but never mind — it will go for what it is worth, and in this 
matter of presiding, I am Jack-at-a-pinch anyway. 

His resentment was roused by the character of the 
attacks made upon President Roosevelt by the Demo- 
cratic candidate, and he was led into making several 
other speeches besides taking an unusual interest in 
the management of the State campaign. While the 
campaign was at the busiest he was called upon to 
deliver an address on the occasion of the 175th Anni- 
versary of the First Congregational Church at Meriden. 
The address, partly historical and partly doctrinal, 
was out of his usual line but as he wrote to 
JohnFlagg: 

It was one of the things which I could not very well 
refuse to do, and the way I agonized over its preparation 
would have amused you and excited your pity at the same 
time. 

It is no wonder that all these things overtaxed his 
strength, so that when he arrived in Washington after 
the reaction from the November victory he was hardly 
in fit condition for the exacting duties before him. 



CHAPTER XLV 

THE LAST SESSION 

Chairman of Judiciary Committee — The Swayne Impeachment — 

A Day's Doings— Legislation of Last Session — Opposes 

Heybum Pure Food Law. 

IF Mr. Piatt had gone on the Judiciary Committee in 
1883 when he first had the opportunity, he would 
have become its Chairman in the Fifty-second Congress 
in 1893 o^ the retirement of Edmunds; for he would 
have been the senior member then in service. When 
Henry M. Teller resigned from the Senate in 1882 to 
become Secretary of the Interior, it left a vacancy on 
the Committee of which Edmunds was Chairman and 
David Davis of Illinois the ranking Democratic 
member. Edmunds and Davis asked Piatt to take 
Teller's place. It was a great compliment to him, 
for he was still a fledgling among his fellows and 
he wanted to go on the Committee. He spoke about 
it to Mr. Hoar who had seen a little longer service 
than he. The Massachusetts Senator informed him 
that he wanted the place himself and felt that it 
belonged to him on the ground of seniority if it were 
going to New England. So Mr. Piatt explained the 
situation to Edmunds and Davis and withdrew in favor 
of Hoar, who became Chairman in due course on the 
retirement of Edmunds. Piatt in turn succeeded to 
Edmunds's place as a New England member of the 

571 



572 Orville H. Piatt 

Committee at a time when he would have been its 
Chairman but for his earher self-sacrifice. Now Hoar 
was gone and the chairmanship came to Piatt. He 
had waited many years for the distinction, and he was 
_ to enjoy it only a little while. 
' The last session of the Fifty-eighth Congress, brief 

though it was, had in it enough of interest to make any 
session memorable. It marked the end not only of 
the Congress but also of the first administration of 
President Roosevelt, who had just received a dazzling 
endorsement at the polls. For some reason the radicals 
in all parties seemed to expect that the administration 
would be marked by revolutionary demonstrations, 
that there would be a general onslaught on the trusts, 
the tarift", the railroads, and vested rights. The elder 
statesmen in the Senate were filled with apprehension. 
They had confidence in the Executive, but they feared 
the signs of the times and dreaded the spirit of socialism 
and populism run wild. Mr. Piatt returned to Wash- 
ington weighed down with a sense of foreboding. "The 
great victory in November," he wrote, "started up 
every fool crank in the United States and we are going 
to have lots of trouble." We have seen how he exerted 
his influence to postpone a revision of the tariff and how 
he discouraged the manifestation of an unreasoning 
campaign against the railroads and the trusts. He 
knew that something must be done sooner or later on all 
these questions, but he wanted to go slow, and he doubted 
whether a restraining hand could long prevail. The 
House was ready for anything. The Senate might be 
swept from its moorings by the spirit of the hour, and 
up to the day of final adjournment the Connecticut 
Senator kept looking for the first sign of weakening in 
the legislative foundations. 



The Last Session 573 

As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as a 
member of the Committee on Finance, he was in the way 
to impress his conservatism on his associates and on 
the administration, and his position was strengthened 
by the support he gave to the President and Secretary 
Hay in matters of international concern in which they 
were deeply interested. 

As if the Senate did not have business enough to 
attend to in ordinary course, the House of Representa- 
tives invited further congestion by impeaching Charles 
Swayne, Judge of the District Court of the United States 
for the Northern District of Florida, of high crimes and 
misdemeanors in office. The charges against Swayne 
were petty, and there was some irritation in the Senate 
that the scant time at its disposal should be invaded 
for their consideration. Yet proceedings having been 
instituted, they must be treated as solemnly as if the 
charges were momentous and the culprit the Chief 
Justice of the United States. It had been many years 
since the Senate had sat as a high court of impeachment. 
The last occasion had been in the trial of Secretary 
Belknap in a former generation, so that the duties 
which fell upon the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee 
found him handicapped by lack of experience. Not 
only did Mr. Piatt have to handle the preliminaries of 
the trial, but when the time for it came, Mr. Frye, the 
President pro tempore, begged on account of illness to 
be excused from the confining task of presiding over 
the court, and Mr. Piatt was named in his stead. The 
Connecticut Senator might well have pleaded age and 
feebleness also, but with characteristic fidelity he bent 
his back to the burden. For over a month, in addition 
to all his other duties, he was obliged to preside over the 
wearisome dehberations of the court, to listen to the 



574 Orville H. Piatt 

interminable testimony and the arguments of counsel, 
and to pass upon questions of procedure. No one who 
witnessed the Senate in session during that period is 
likely soon to forget it. The presiding officer invested 
the proceedings with simple dignity, and at their con- 
clusion an impressive picture remained in the records 
of the Senate. Yet all this time he was struggling with 
an insidious illness. Early in the trial he had been 
seized with an attack of grippe from which he never 
fully recovered. He might without criticism have 
quit his work in Washington altogether, but he clung to 
it as though it were a religious penance. Every morn- 
ing he roused himself with an effort to go to the Capitol 
in a closed carriage, and every evening he returned to 
his rooms to complete the day in bed. All through it, 
too, he attended to the multifarious business of the 
Senate, carrying the while, as had been the case for 
years, the peculiar local business which otherwise would 
have fallen upon his dying colleague. 

In a whimsical mood one night, resting a little after 
completing his work, he dictated, at his Secretary's 
suggestion, a partial list of the day's doings, so far as 
they could be recalled. It is the kind of a diary which 
might interest the constituents of any influential 
Senator : 

Tuesday, January 31, 1905. 

Woman from Postoffice Department came, before I had 
finished my breakfast, to ask me to stand back of her, etc. 

Started Miss Lawler off on work which kept her busy 
until after two o'clock, while smoking my cigar and reading 
the paper. 

Signed batch of letters. 

Conference in parlor downstairs (Arlington) with Gover- 
nor Murphy. 



The Last Session 575 

Interview with Mr. Harrison. 

More letters. 

Went to Attorney-General's office in Garvin matter, and 
to discuss bill allowing bench warrants issued by Federal 
courts to run all over the United States. 

Went to State Department to get a bill, sent me in ref- 
erence to naturalization, corrected — State Department 
blundered. 

Secretary Loomis wanted to talk with me about arbitra- 
tion treaties. 

Hurried from there to committee room for eleven o'clock 
meeting on impeachment proceedings, which lasted until 
twelve o'clock. 

Discussed arbitration with Spooner. 

Dr. Wiley about appropriation to investigate leprosy. 

Then to the Senate. 

W — bothered me about a couple of cases before his 
committee. 

G — about certificates of incorporation, issued to the 
District under the code. Got all the reports and data on 
that subject. 

Discussed in the Senate proposition to condemn land 
for irrigation purposes. 

Discussed other matters. 

Called out three or four times by newspaper corre- 
spondents, to find out what was doing in regard to several 
matters. 

Solberg came over from library with reference to Copy- 
right bill ; listened to him while I took my lunch. 

Looked up condition of bill providing for the building 
of a new bridge across the Missouri River between Omaha 
and Council Bluffs; telegraphed Seligman and Co. in 
relation to same. 

Crank volume came over from Speaker Cannon. 

Hill with reference to various matters. 

B — after me four or five times. 

Went up in document room to hunt up an old ca?e in 



576 Orville H. Piatt 

relation to refunding of money to Madison County, Ken- 
tucky — ^taxes collected. 

Newspaper men again after adjournment; then finally 
to the Arlington. 

Signed thirty-seven letters. 

Read over proceedings in several important matters 
pending, before dinner; read Star and other newspapers. 

Dinner with Mrs. Piatt without serious interruption!!! 

Senator Stewart about Indian matters. 

Walter Eli Clark about Wickersham case. 

Elliott about seals. 

Had planned to take up my correspondence at 7:30; 
reached room about nine o'clock. 

Went through about a week's accumulation of mail, 
dictated twenty-three letters, and straightened up several 
matters by 10:30, when I felt I could dismiss my clerk 
for the night, 

A mere recital of the questions of legislation in which 
he interested himself makes a formidable array. He 
secured an amendment to the Military Academy 
Appropriation bill placing General Hawley on the re- 
tired list of the army. He offered amendments to the 
Heyburn Pure Food bill, the Naval Appropriation bill, 
and minor measures; he handled a bill amending the 
copyright law, he secured the enactment of a dozen 
pension bills, and reported several measures from com- 
mittees to which he belonged; he delivered eulogies on 
Hanna, Hoar, and Ingalls, each in its way a high speci- 
men of memorial eloquence. He spoke more than a 
hundred times, debating in greater or less detail nearly 
fifty measures, criticising and delaying many private 
bills and items in appropriation bills which but for his 
watchfulness would have slipped through. He worked 
for the ratification of the arbitration treaties and the 
treaty with San Domingo. He discussed at some 



The Last Session 577 

length extravagance in printing, the distribution of 
seeds, the pressing of claims for injury to employ6s in 
government shops. He opposed the Pure Food bill 
which the newspapers of the day were calling upon 
Congress to enact and in favor of which the Senate was 
flooded with petitions. He was not against all legisla- 
tion, but he declared that he would not vote for a bill 
like the one under consideration: 

I do not believe there are twenty Senators out of the 
whole number of Senators here who believe that this 
is such a bill as ought to be passed, and for one I am not 
going to pass a bill in a hurry because there is some clamor 
somewhere that the subject must be attended to. The 
old adage about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure 
might well be applied to legislation — legislate in haste and 
repent at leisure. ... I do not think the committee 
ought to bring any such bill here. I think it is contrary 
to the spirit of our laws, to the spirit of justice, to the spirit 
of fair play, to prosecute and convict any man for violat- 
ing police regulations, and bills of this sort, when he is 
entirely innocent of any intent to violate them. 

It seemed to him that the evil could be remedied in 
another way: 

Suppose a bill were framed which defined what should be 
adulterated and misbranded articles. Then suppose the 
bill required that every manufacturer who put his goods 
into interstate commerce, or any other person who put 
goods into interstate commerce — that is, shipped them 
from one State to another,— should place upon the goods a 
guarantee that they were not adulterated and not mis- 
branded within the definitions of the act. I do not see 
why the whole subject would not be reached in that simple 
way. Then the person guilty of selling misbranded or 
adulterated articles is easily found, easily prosecuted, and 
37 



578 Orville H. Piatt 

all the people who might be entirely innocent, who had 
no desire to violate the law, would have no trouble about it 
whatever. 

The wonder is that he should have borne up under 
the strain so long as he did, but he carried his work 
right through to the fourth of March, with the "crush- 
ing, grinding avalanche of legislation" incident to the 
closing weeks of a Congress, and witnessed the cere- 
monies inducting President Roosevelt into office.^ 



• An interesting light has been thrown on the Senator's last 
days in Washington by the talented newspaper correspondent, 
James B. Morrow. Shortly after Mr. Piatt's death he wrote in the 
Cleveland Leader : 

"I suppose I was the last newspaper man who went to see him 
in Washington. He was ill and showed it. During the impeach- 
ment trial of Judge Swayne he had acted as President of the court 
and had overtaxed his strength. He was seventy-eight years old 
and had suffered during the winter from two attacks of grippe. The 
Senate was in special session, being carried along after Mr. Roose- 
velt's inauguration for the purpose of confirming appointments 
and in an attempt to ratify the treaty with San Domingo. Piatt 
wanted to get away; he longed for his home in Connecticut; he 
was weary of Washington and the work of Congress. 

"I found him just after an executive session of the Senate in the 
committee room. He was walking the floor with nervous energy, 
still tall and erect in his body, still handsome in feature and coun- 
tenance, and still graceful and steady in his physical movements. 
Another effort had been made to come to a vote on the treaty, but 
it had failed. The morning had been spent in useless talk, and 
opposition to the treaty was not alone garrulous, but was becoming 
decidedly partisan and obstinate. Standing in the centre of the 
room was a man who had called to ask Piatt to write an article 
for a magazine on a subject of some importance. 

" 'I haven't time,' Piatt said in no gracious mood or tone. 
'I have n't had any leisure for thirty years. I made a speech on 
the subject you want me to write about. Go look it up and see 
what I said. I don't know how it is with you, ' he said to the man, 
'but when I get through with a subject I pour it all out of my mind. 
If I ever take it up again, I have to go over the ground just as I 



The Last Session 579 

Some of his Connecticut friends who came to the 
inauguration remonstrated with him for overtaxing 
his slender physical resources during the trial, and he 
admitted that perhaps he ought to have remained in 

did before. I am asked every week to give my opinion to news- 
papers and magazines and to write them out. I can't do it.' 

"The man was sympathetic and good-tempered, and Piatt began 
to excuse his irritation by telling of his bodily and mental weariness. 
" 'You have come at a bad time,' he exclaimed. 'I have been 
working for sixteen to eighteen hours a day for three months and 
am down at the heel. The public, I suppose, thinks we have an 
easy and agreeable time, but we are worked to death. ' And he 
looked at me, as I thought, to confirm his statement. 

" 'That is the view out-of-doors,' I replied. 'The world be- 
lieves the Senate to be an altogether delightful and restful place.' 
This observation of mine did the magazine man no good. Piatt 
stopped walking and looked at me in considerable disgust. I 
fancy there was some pity, too, in his mind, for such stupid 
ignorance of an incontrovertible fact. William Brimage Bate, 
Senator from Tennessee, was at that moment dead and in his 
coffin. He had gone to Roosevelt's inauguration, had sat down 
out-doors, had been stricken by pneumonia, and had 'gone to 
sleep' as St. Paul describes it, at the rare age of seventy-eight. 
Bate was in Piatt's mind and so he said: 

" 'The work of the Senate killed Hanna, and Bate, whose funeral 
we are to have this afternoon. It is only by God's blessing that it 
has n't killed me. ' 

"To re-establish myself I added : 'Senator Spooner complained to 
me this morning that he was worn out. ' 
" ' He is ; I know he is, ' Piatt replied. 

"The magazine man in the meantime had backed away toward 
the door, but he had not wholly given up his pursuit. 'After the 
special session of the Senate is over, ' he ventured to say, ' I 'U come 
to see you again.' 

" 'You will not find me,' Piatt answered. 'I shall get out of 
this place on the first train. ' Then as he recollected the uncer- 
tainty of his going and the contumacy of the Democrats, he added 
in some gentleness: 'However, if they keep on talking about the 
treaty, I fear we shall be kept here all summer. ' The man waited 
in silence at the door, and as Piatt thereafter utterly ignored his 
presence and turned to talk with me, he softly went out, thinking 
no doubt that the Senator from Connecticut was a peevish and 



58o • Orville H. Piatt 

his room, but he said earnestly: "It was just as neces- 
sary that I should attend that impeachment caurt each 
day as that a man should be on hand when he is going 
to be hanged." 

much over-estimated old man. But he had simply appeared 'at 
a bad time. ' Any one who loves to live in the woods, to search 
the fields for flowers, and to stand in the water and whip a brook 
for trout, contains the very elements of joy and sunshine. But 
with Piatt these were not on the surface. Friendship dug for 
them and found them. Strangers never had that chance, but if 
they happened around at the right time they were fairly treated 
and sent away without offence." 



CHAPTER XLVI 

THE END 

A President's Letter — Funeral of General Hawley — Address at 
Hartford — Death and Burial. 

AFTER the fourth of March, the Senate remained 
in uneventful session for a fortnight, according to 
the usual practice with a new administration, the only- 
business transacted being the confirmation of nomina- 
tions and the consideration of the San Domingo treaty. 
The days were sultry and unseasonable, sapping the 
vitality of an old man still suffering from an exhausting 
winter's work. Mr. Piatt's friends at home had known 
of his illness and were devising schemes for restoring 
him to health. One of them, about to cross the ocean, 
invited him and Mrs. Piatt to go along. But the 
Senator would not hear to it: 

I can not go to Europe with you. I wish I could. You 
will say I need it and must have the rest, but there are 
things that I must do, so that I can not be gone for six 
weeks or thereabouts from the twentieth of April. 

And to Dr. Ford he wrote : 

We will get away from here before long, but that will not 
stop my work, though I shall come home just as soon as I 
can. I can not break up my Adirondacks trip for anything, 
and I can not do the other things that I must do, and go to 
Europe and the Adirondacks too. Besides, it would be 

581 



582 Orville H. Piatt 

no sort of rest for me I want a rocking-chair and a wood 
fire and quiet for a few days. 

"^ In recognition of his completion of twenty-six years 

of service in the Senate, Charles Henry Butler, Reporter 
of the Supreme Court, a long-time friend, had arranged 
to give him a dinner on Saturday, March i8th, the day 
on which the special session of the Senate came to an 
end. Invitations had been sent to the most notable men 
in Washington, the President, the Vice-President, the 
Chief Justice, the Secretary of State, his closest associ- 
ates in the Senate. On the eve of the dinner, word came 
that General Hawley, who had been dying slowly for 
months, was about to pass into the hereafter. He was 
no longer a member of the Senate, his term of service 
having just come to an end, but he had been a colleague 
and close friend for a quarter of a century and at Mr. 
Piatt's request the invitations were recalled. The 
sequel was as marked a tribute as the dinner would have 
been. Letters of hearty eulogy were received from 
many of the intended guests, among them this from 
President Roosevelt: 

White House, March i8, 1905. 
My dear Mr. Butler: 

May I, through you, extend my heartiest greetings to 
the guest of the evening, Senator O. H. Piatt. It is difficult 
to say what I really think of Senator Piatt without seeming 
to use extravagant expression. I do not know a man in 
public life who is more loved and honored, or who has done 
more substantial and disinterested service to the country. 
It makes one feel really proud as an American, to have 
such a man occupying such a place in the councils of the 
nation. As for me personally, I have now been associated 
with him intimately during four sessions of Congress, and 
I can not overstate my obligations to him, not only for 



The End 583 

what he has done by speech and vote, but because it gives 
me heart and strength to see and consult with so fearless, 
high-minded, practicable, and far-sighted a public servant. 
Wishing you a most pleasant evening, believe me 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

Mr. Piatt was keenly affected and sent to Mr. Butler 
a note in which he said : 

My dear Mr. Butler: 

There are several things I want to say, and yet do not 
know how to say them. Your desire to give me a dinner 
on the occasion of my having served twenty-six years in 
the Senate, touched me more closely than I can tell you, 
and again, the kind and flattering words of the gentlemen 
whom you invited to meet me, either in acceptance, or 
equally in their expressions of regret, touched me even more 
deeply. Above all, the written words of the President, 
which I cannot but believe were sincere, made me feel 
that what I have tried to do through these many eventful 
years is appreciated beyond what I could have any reason 
to expect. I can never forget them. I wish you would let 
me have a copy of the President's letter. As the world 
counts gain, I have not much to leave those who come after 
me, but as I count fortune, I could leave no greater inheri- 
tance than that estimate of the most distinguished man in 
this country, or the world. I can not understand it all, 
but I am sure I appreciate it. It was a great disappoint- 
ment to me, as I know it must have been to you, that under 
the circumstances I felt it best that the dinner should be 
called off, but I assure you that I shall always remember 
the friendship which prompted you to propose it, and the 
affectionate regard which all who were invited to participate 
in it seem to cherish for me. 

Most sincerely yours, 

O. H. Platt. 



584 Orville H. Piatt 

General Hawley died on the day set for the dinner. 
The burial was at Hartford, with the ceremonies be- 
fitting a distinguished public service, and Senator Piatt 
went north on the funeral train. It was a raw and 
blustering day in Hartford. He became chilled as he 
waited a long time with bared head on the platform of 
the railway station. 

The General Assembly gathered in joint convention 
for memorial services, and he spoke a eulogy by which 
all who heard him were deeply moved. His towering 
form seemed shaken with grief as he uttered the simple 
sentences which came from his heart, concluding with 
words which had the fervor of a prayer : 

So we will not think of him as dead, but living, and we 
will think of him as we will think of friends whom we some- 
times go down to see as they sail away in ships for foreign 
lands, never expecting to see them with our eyes again, but 
knowing that they are still in other fields exerting the 
activities of life. We will say farewell to-day as we com- 
mit him to the earth; no no, not farewell, but that better 
word "Good-by" — God be with you, Good-by. We will 
whisper that word "Good-by," for the heart feels most 
when the lips move not, and the eye speaks the gentle 
"Good-by." 

From Hartford he returned to Washington to see 
the President again and attend to departmental busi- 
ness, and after two or three irksome days he went home 
to Kirby Comer, where he arrived on Tuesday after- 
noon. For a time he loafed about the house, dictating 
a few letters, reading, smoking, waiting for a revival 
of energy to take him out on the trail down to the brook 
which runs through the little valley below. On 
Friday, the last day of March, he had arranged to have 




cr 

UJ 

I- 

UJ 
UJ 

O 

u 
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< 



UJ 

I 



.jjlili 



The End 585 

his first outing, but instead there came a chill and then a 
fever. Dr. Ford was summoned and found him suffer- 
ing from bronchitis with indications of pneumonia. He 
was seriously ill, but there was nothing alarming in 
the symptoms until the following Thursday when the 
evidences of pneumonia became pronounced. News 
of his illness had gone out, and messages of sympathy 
and encouragement came pouring in. Then for a few 
days there were signs of improvement, and for a time it 
looked as though he might throw off the disease, but the 
poison was in his blood. On Thursday, April 20th, 
there came a final relapse. He remarked quite casually 
to Dr. Ford: "You know what this means. Doctor, 
and so do I." It was the only allusion he had made 
to the seriousness of his condition. He lingered one 
more day. Then, his wife watching by his side, he 
fell asleep. At seven minutes before nine o'clock on 
April 2ist, his soul passed behind the veil that hides 
the eternal mysteries. It was Good-Friday, the day 
on which he always liked to be among his old friends 
at home. 

The announcement that the end had come fell upon 
the people of Connecticut with a heavy blow, and grief 
sat on men's faces as they talked among themselves. 
The air was filled with eulogy. Tributes sped home 
from all over the United States. It was known that 
a strong man had fallen. 

The Governor of the State proposed a state funeral. 
Mrs. Piatt decHned the of^er. She wanted the burial to 
be simple, and so it was. It was set for the morning of 
Tuesday, April 25th. The day was one of the fairest 
of the year, and the Litchfield hills were sprinkled with 
the budding beauty of the spring. A plain oak coffin 
rested in the living room at Kirby Comer until the time 



586 Orville H. Piatt 

approached for carrying it to the Meeting House on the 
Green. After a custom of the village, it was placed on 
a rude wagon covered with laurel and drawn by two 
gray horses bred on the farm where Orville Piatt had 
srrown to manhood. The horses were led by two 
neighbors, while the bearers, old village companions, 
walked on either side. Thus his ashes were borne to 
the church near which had gathered over two thousand 
people from the country round about. The church 
within had been fittingly dressed with flowers and the 
American flag. 

There was no eulogy. The Episcopal service was 
read; a choir of villagers led in the singing of America, 
and as the body was carried down the aisle they sang, 
as a recessional, Jerusalem the Golden. Following the 
wagon and its sacred burden, the people, with uncovered 
heads fell into a procession which moved slowly from 
the Meeting House to the burying-ground on the hillside 
only a few rods away. 

First came the family and servants, among them the 
Senator's faithful colored messenger James Hurley. 
Then came the Vice-President of the United States, the 
Governor and State officers, ten United States Senators: 
Bulkeley of Connecticut, Pettus of Alabama, Daniel 
of Virginia, Proctor of Vermont, Kean of New Jersey, 
Dick of Ohio, Carter of Montana, Gallinger of New 
Hampshire, Beveridge of Indiana, and Crane of Massa- 
chusetts; the Connecticut delegation in Congress and 
other members of the House of Representatives, Com- 
mittees of the General Assembly, many men of note 
from Connecticut and other States, and a great throng 
of citizens, over one hundred men and women from 
Meriden alone among the number. The body was 
lowered into the grave overlooking a valley bathed in 



The End 5^7 

sunshine, with wooded hills beyond. The people joined 
in singing "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," 
thus with full hearts giving thanks for the inspiration 

of a noble life. 

A bronze tablet rests upon the grave with this 

inscription : 

ORVILLE HITCHCOCK PLATT 

OF CONNECTICUT 

A SENATOR OF THE UNITED STATES 
FOR 26 YEARS 

HE SERVED GOD 

HIS COUNTRY AND HUMANITY 

WITHOUT FEAR 

AND WITHOUT REPROACH 



CHAPTER XLVII 

AN OLD-FASHIONED SENATOR 

The Lincoln of New England — Personal Traits — Mental 
Habit — Religious Tendencies — A Lover of Old Ways — 

Lofty Ideals. 

CONNECTICUT people had a way of calling their 
senior Senator "The Abraham Lincoln of New 
England. " A great many men have been likened to 
Lincoln at one time or another for all sorts of reasons, 
so that the comparison does not of necessity imply a 
striking compliment; yet in his case it had a fitness 
arising from something else than superficial physical 
resemblance or the possession of homely qualities of 
mind; for Piatt had many of the finer traits which 
gave Lincoln his peculiar eminence, and knowing Piatt 
one could not help the feeling that in Lincoln's circum- 
stances he would have done about as Lincoln did. 
But with obvious points of similarity there were others 
in which the two were not at all alike, and it would not 
be right to carry the comparison too far. 

Piatt was as tall as Lincoln, towering nearly half 
a foot above most of his fellows. He carried himself ^ 
with natural dignity in spite of his great height. Artists 
have said of Lincoln that he had " the awkwardness of 
nature which is akin to grace, " and so had Piatt. 
He might have seemed ungainly to a chance observer; 

yet he moved with the impressive ease that comes 

588 



An Old-Fashioned Senator 589 

from living out-of-doors, from tramping unploughed 
fields and rock-strewn hills, and marks the man of rural 
birth and habit from those who dwell in towns. He 
had a noble bearing born of a noble mind. 

Those who remember Piatt in boyhood agree that 
his face was strikingly handsome — almost Byronic in 
its beauty; and a daguerreotype which has come down 
to us bears out this flattering opinion. As he grew 
to manhood, the features developed lines of firmness 
which, to the stranger, often gave an impression of 
austerity though to those who knew him well his expres- 
sion was not stern, but filled with amiability and good- 
will. It disclosed a simple strength of character, a 
harmony between mind and body, an unconsciousness 
of observation and indifference to outward things which 
were a truthful revelation of the man within, for no 
one ever went his way more straightly without caring 
how lookers-on might be impressed by what he did. 

He had been a shy and bashful boy, oppressed with 
self-distrust. As he grew to be a man, his shyness fell 
away, though he never seemed fully conscious of his 
strength; yet to the end he was keenly sensitive, and, 
being so, showed delicate consideration for a like 
trait in others. Sometimes when vexed and troubled 
he seemed out of sorts to chance intruders, but he 
was always quick and generous with self-reproach. 
His transient mood would soon be followed by a note 
like this: 

As soon as you were gone this morning I felt that I had 
not treated you very courteously or politely, but you 
caught me before breakfast and before my cigar, and I 
never half know what I am about then. Do not lay it up 
against me, will you? 

These incidents were rare, for he was long-suffering 



■^yc 



590 Orville H. Piatt 

and kind, so much so that many who failed to under- 
stand his spirit of forbearance trespassed upon his 
patience with impunity. 

His personal attachments were deep and tender. 
He was not demonstrative and rarely betrayed him- 
self except at times in writing to a few for whom 
he cared. His native diffidence restrained him from 
speaking his inmost feelings, so that some regarded him 
as cold and distant when he was really famishing for 
human sympathy; but there was a gentle insistence 
in his manner more eloquent than words, when in the 
company of those he liked. To a few — only a few — 
he opened up his heart. " I get tired and lonely be- 
cause I can not see you, and feel as though I had n't 
any friends," he writes to one of these, and " Now write 
me, for I can't endure the idea that I am forgotten. " 
In eulogy of Charles A. Russell, to whom he was close- 
ly attached he said: "Parting with my colleague, my 
comrade, and my dear friend, I repeat the words of 
David when he mourned for Jonathan: ' Very pleasant 
hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, 
passing the love of woman.' " 

He was subject at times to fits of depression when he 
felt like renouncing his dignities and going back to the 
artless existence of his early years. These spells came 
on him often during the last days of an exhausting 
session, when he was longing for the solitude of the 
Adirondacks or the restfulness of Judea. " I am like 
Elijah under the juniper tree, " he wrote at the con- 
clusion of his work on the Dingley tariff in the summer 
of 1897. And another time he writes with a whimsi- 
cal touch : "The grasshopper that is continually hopping 
towards me looks as big as a coach team, and I know 
will be a burden when he gets to me." 



An Old-Fashioned Senator 591 

But these were only fleeting phases. His habit 
was to look on life with cheerful courage and serene 
philosophy. 

" More and more I see that contentment is great 
gain," he writes to an old schoolmate; and again: 
" Success and happiness are relative terms, and day 
by day I admire more and more the comprehensive 
line of an old poet of the sixteenth century — ' My mind 
to me a kingdom is.' " " 

Of his political aspirations he said : 

I have no ambition. If the people of Connecticut want 
to send some one to the Senate in my place I shall not 
whimper or even care. I only want to go on while I have 
strength, doing what there is for me to do as well as I can, 
and whether it is here or elsewhere — in the Senate or in 
some quiet cabin by the way^ — makes no difference. I have 
no high notions about myself, ask for nothing, want noth- 
ing, am content. I think I have that much philosophy. 

He was unaffectedly religious, though from his 
early experience among the excommunicated Aboli- 
tionists of Judea it was not to be expected that he 
would be straitly bound by dogmas. He wrote of 
his old teacher, Mr. Gunn, that " he loved God, loved 
man, loved truth; and he served God, served man, 
served truth"; and he might as well have written it 
of himself. He was reverent in all things. He believed 
in prayer and never fell asleep without one on his lips. 
He shrank from ceremony and was not a stickler for 
doctrines. Though a member of the Congregational 
Church in Meriden, a Bible-class teacher, and a deacon, 
he was not tied down to any rehgious denomination. 
During his later years he usually attended the Episco- 
pal Church, both in Washington and Judea. He hked 



592 Orville H. Piatt 

the simplicity and directness of the service, which 
harmonized with his rehgious mood. He was versed 
in hymnology and knew many hymns by heart. His 
favorite was " Jesus, the very thought of Thee. " 
That, he used to say, was the real Crusader's hymn. 
The Collect of which he was most fond was that 
for the ninth Sunday after Trinity : 

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, the Spirit to think 
and do always such things as are right ; that we, who cannot 
do any thing that is good without Thee, may by Thee be 
enabled to live according to Thy will; through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 

But, after all, his most congenial place of worship was 
out-of-doors. His absorbing passion was the woods. 
Once there he melted into the environment as though 
he had never dreamed of any other life. He was con- 
tinually crying, " My natural home is in the woods, " 
and " I long more and more for the hermit life of the 
Adirondacks. " 

To one who understands him he writes: 

I am at home with the woods and waters and mountains, 
and it seems as though I could be happy there where I 
could let mind as well as body go to sleep. 

And to another: 

When we go to the Adirondacks we go back absolutely 
to a state of nature, leaving all care and even knowledge 
behind. We eat and sleep, row and roam, and that is all. 
The mind rests with the body. 

He liked old-fashioned things; read old books; 
studied old customs, especially those relating to the 
early days of New England and Connecticut. He 



An Old-Fashioned Senator 593 

found relaxation in writing about incidents of early 
Connecticut history. He prepared papers on "The 
Extinction of the Meeting House," "The British 
Invasion of New Haven in 1779," the "Encounter 
between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in 1798, " 
and the quaint custom of Negro elections and the 
inauguration of Negro governors which prevailed in 
Connecticut in the early days of the last century. 
All this involved a lot of correspondence and hunting 
through the records, but he liked it, and his papers 
now have an historical value of their own. He was 
familiar with American and English history, knew by 
heart the story of the Revolution and the proceedings 
of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional 
Convention; was fond of mousing among curious old 
books, well known in their time but httle considered 
nowadays, the names of the authors of which do not 
appear in any current lists. He was fond of archae- 
ology. He read ever3rthing he could lay hands on 
relating to ancient civilizations, and his one extrava- 
gance was the buying of rare books dealing with the 
customs of antiquity. " If I had leisure and means, " 
he once said, " I should have been thoroughly taken 
up with archaeological investigations. " One thing 
that helped to reconcile him to the drudgery of his 
work on the Indian Committee was that it brought 
him close to the customs and practices of the abo- 
riginal inhabitants of America, and he welcomed the 
opportunity to pursue inquiries along those lines. 
He was pleased when, after the death of Senator Morrill 
in 1899, he was made a Regent of the Smithsonian 
Institution, and he was deeply interested in the Institu- 
tion as long as he lived. Its officers were among his 
most valued friends, and one of his last acts was to 
38 



594 Orville H. Piatt 

help secure a $4,000,000 appropriation for the National 
Museum in 1904, which will be a lasting monument 
to him. 

He had no knack for saving money and was generally 
indifferent to the things that money could buy. He 
accepted his financial sacrifice as one of the compensa- 
tions of his political career, though as time wore on 
he could not help regretting that he had not laid by 
enough to insure a comfortable old age, and indulging 
occasionally in a half-humorous protest against the 
privations incident to life in Washington without 
sufficient means. He would have been contented 
with the most modest income, so long as it was sufficient 
to keep him from anxiety about the future. " I am 
very much inclined to think, " he wrote quizzically 
in 1897, just* after his fourth election to the Senate, 
" that if I had an annuity of $2000 I would let some- 
body else come to the Senate while I went fishing. " 

He had a dry Yankee humor which helped to save 
him from great errors and served him in his gentle 
mastery of men, so that he seldom erred in judging 
character or in weighing political conditions. He 
had many pat illustrations, though he rarely told a 
story; but he could enjoy another's story or a humorous 
situation as keenly as any man. 

His sense of fitness saved him from frequent " inter- 
views. " He did not believe in announcing his position 
publicly on a question until the time came for him to 
speak in the Senate or to vote. He had known cases 
where Senators had found themselves embarrassed 
by declaring themselves on questions which they had 
not thoroughly studied, and he did not intend, if he 
could help it, to be caught that way; yet while avoiding 
publicity he would often help out one who was seeking 



An Old-Fashioned Senator 595 

light by elucidating the points in question with a 
comprehensiveness and clarity which few men in 
the Senate could approach. 

He had a high conception of the duty of a Senator. 
His great respect for the office kept him from inter- 
fering in the local politics of Connecticut. "It has 
always seemed to me, " he said, " that I must do one 
of two things — try to be a boss in my State and con- 
trol everything, or let it alone and try to be a Senator 
in Washington " ; and so he was a Senator at Washing- 
ton with all the name implies. Sometimes it hit him 
hard to be loyal to his idea. Early in the Roosevelt 
administration his own son became an applicant for ap- 
pointment to the Federal Bench. There were other can- 
didates and the politicians of the State were at odds 
among themselves. It was a trying time for the Sena- 
tor. A word from him would settle the contest. He 
had not known his son would be a candidate until the 
fight was on, yet his affection tugged at him to help 
the younger Piatt in an ambition which had been 
cherished for years. He was sick with worry and 
took to his bed, but he let his distress eat out his heart 
and would not lift a finger to influence the result. 
The President of his own accord decided to make the 
appointment, and when he announced it he added: 
" Senator Piatt's conduct in this affair is the most 
unselfish exhibition of conscientious determination 
to make no selfish use of public power that I have ever 
seen." When James Piatt called at the White House 
to thank the President, he was greeted with the hearty 
exclamation : " Your father is the whitest man I 
know!" 

Throughout his life he fashioned his conduct after 
the manner of one who believed profoundly in the 



596 Orville H. Piatt 

never ending influence of every spoken word and un- 
spoken thought. That was a sentiment to which he 
often gave expression as when, in the course of his 
tribute to Senator Hoar, he said : 

I am one of those who behave that no thought conceived 
by the brain, no word spoken by the hps, no act performed 
by the will, has ever been lost or ceases to exert its influ- 
ence upon mankind. No thought, word, or act, of the high- 
est, the lowest, the richest, the poorest, the best, or the 
worst of men and women who have lived on earth since 
the days when mankind became socially organized has ever 
been wholly effaced. The world is to-day what these 
thoughts, words, and deeds of all who have gone before us 
have made it. 

He had an analytical mind. Things did not come 
to him by intuition. He had to think out a proposition 
slowly and laboriously, but when he had once got to 
the root of it he was conversant with every argument 
and had examined it from every point of view. There 
was no limit to his courage in sustaining a position 
which he had reached by plodding processes of thought, 
yet he had little pride of opinion and saw no shame in 
accepting the conclusions of others when once con- 
vinced that they were right, or in acknowledging his 
error if convinced that he was wrong. His mind was 
always open to new light. He never strove for popular 
applause nor cared for it save as it carried the presump- 
tion of work well done. He was not indifferent to 
praise or blame, yet he never sought one or feared the 
other. He was strongly moral, pure in thought as 
well as in deed. He was far-sighted, shrewd, and wise; 
of sound judgment, broadly human; trustful of his 
friends; guileless in a way, yet unbeguilable. In spite 



An Old-Fashioned Senator 597 

of his gentleness and generosity of mind, he was stern 
and unyielding in advancing what he knew to be 
right, and he would flame with anger against what he 
felt to be wrong. No one was ever rash enough to 
approach him with a questionable proposition, and 
no one ever hesitated to solicit his adherence to a 
righteous cause. In twenty- five years of service in 
the Senate, he had gained a position of unquestioned 
authority, growing out of confidence which had never 
been betrayed. 

There were others with more striking qualities of 
mind, more captivating personality, or greater faculty 
for organized control, but in the composite traits that 
go to make the ideal Senator no other was quite his 
equal. His word went a little farther than any other, 
his example was followed more frequently with implicit 
faith. His motive was never questioned, and his 
judgment was always held in unqualified respect. 

In the minds of those who followed legislation closely 
for the quarter of a century during which he served, 
he was the most useful member of the body to which 
he belonged, — a Senator of the United States for Con- 
necticut, without fear and without reproach. 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

WORDS FITLY SPOKEN 

Tributes by his Associates in Public Life — Eulogies in the Senate — 
Senator Lodge's Estimate of his Character. 

WHEN the last call comes to a man who has held 
a place in the general eye, it is customary for 
those who have been associated with him, or whose 
recognized position is supposed to give their judg- 
ment weight, to set down their estimates of his 
service. This is a formality due partly to convention 
and partly to the exigencies of public prints, so that 
from the nature of the case, with little regard to per- 
sonal relations, the words thus spoken are uniformly 
commendatory. 

A like rule holds, though in less degree, with editorial 
comment at the moment, before the time arrives for 
recording the impersonal verdict of history. 

Of such perfunctory eulogy the death of Senator 
Piatt evoked the usual amount, which those who 
knew him best could neither take exception to nor 
greatly prize; but in the multitude of tribute there 
was some which, as expressing the discriminating 
judgment of those who had an opportunity for intimate 
acquaintance with his career, may properly be given 
permanence in a sketch which aims to portray the 
salient features of his character and life. The messages 
of sympathy which winged their way to Kirby Comer 

59S 



Words Fitly Spoken 599 

abounded in expressions of love and unaffected grief, 
as well as of respect. 

" He was one of the strongest, gentlest, noblest, and 
most lovable men I ever knew, " wrote William E. 
Chandler, who sat at the adjoining desk in the Senate 
for several years. ^ 

Nelson W. Aldrich, who served with Mr. Piatt on 
the Finance Committee for a decade, declared: "I 
am conscious of the loss of a dear friend, who was all 
in all the best man I ever knew " ; and this sentiment 
he reiterated later in the Senate. 

•Mr. Chandler writes: 

" Mr. Piatt was a man of very tender feelings of friendship toward 
his intimates, and I had the good fortune to be warmly loved by 
him. 

"I was with him alone for a season at Long Lake in the Adiron- 
dacks, and our intercourse there strengthened our mutual afifections. 

" He was very lonely after his first wife's death, I think even 
more so because she had been so long an invalid. 

" After Senator Morrill's death I moved my seat to the right of Mr. 
Piatt, on the front row, and we continued together until I left 
the Senate. 

"He was constantly making afifectionate remarks. One day he 
seemed too quiet and a little disconsolate, and I began talking 
cheeringly to him. Shortly he said: 'I need more affection. Do 
you love me?' My reply was, 'Of course I love you.' But he 
continued: 'Do you really love me? Are you sure you love mc?' 
My response was warm enough to satisfy one, and he laid his hand 
on mine with a gentle pressure that deeply affected us both. This 
incident is slight and it is impossible to reproduce, in words alone, 
the strong desire he showed for my affection and his satisfaction 
with what I could truthfully and sincerely assure him. 

" I have had several experiences — doubtless more than my share — 
of reciprocal affection with men in public life, all disregarding 
sections and politics and heeding not mutual mistakes and faults, 
and I place my relations with Mr. Piatt very near to the head of 
the list. 

"It is a great satisfaction to me to know that his last years were 
brightened and his affections given full scope and reciprocated 
through ideal domestic relations." 



6oo Orville H. Piatt 

William B. Allison, a fellow Senator for twenty-six 
years, wrote : " I know of no one who will be as much 
mourned for by his associates, not only for his most 
considerate and kindly qualities, but for his great use- 
fulness to his country. He was in the Senate like 
the mainspring of a watch. " 

Shelby M. Cullom described him as the best "all 
around " member of the Senate. " Senator Piatt, " 
he wrote, " was capable in more ways to do what the 
exigencies of the day from time to time put upon him 
than any other man in the Senate. . . . His judgment 
was a little more exactly right than any other 
Senator's. " 

Others who had been associated with him in Wash- 
ington bore testimony: 

William H. Taft: The country which he loved so 
well has lost from a place of great power and usefulness 
a protector and defender of its best interests whom it 
could ill afford to lose. He stood four-square to all 
the winds that blew. 

John C. Spooner : Those of us who knew the Senator, 
the trend of the times, the power for good of his learn- 
ing, experience, watchfulness, and conscience, and the 
great part he played in council and in action, realize 
more keenly than can the country at large the country's 
loss. But in the last years, with all his modesty, the 
country had grown to know and trust him as a great 
statesman, and the knowledge of this, testified in so 
many ways, must have been an unspeakable comfort 
to him. 

Elihu Root : He will always live in my memory as 
one of the purest and best public servants whom I 
have ever known. 

Edward Everett Hale: He could not know how 



Words Fitly Spoken 6oi 

profound was the regard and respect in which I held 
him. I had not the honor of even an acquaintance 
with him until I became Chaplain of the Senate. But 
then his welcome and kindness to me were constant. 
His seat was close to the steps by which I came down 
from the desk, every day, and I was perhaps apt to 
catch his eye and kind salute more often than that of 
any Senator. More than once he asked me to take 
his seat when I was on the floor. ... I was almost 
always present at the sessions of the impeachment. 
I Hke to recall now the dignity with which he clothed 
that whole proceeding, in his position of president. I 
am sure that the serious, most impressive character 
which he gave to all that was done will remain as a 
lesson to all of us. 

Charles W. Fairbanks: He was level-headed and 
courageous. He was a laborious and intelligent stu- 
dent, yielding his judgment only to the best reason. 
He helped fashion some of the most important laws 
enacted by Congress during the last quarter of a cen- 
tury. I know of no one who was a safer guide than he 
in public affairs. There was no one who more than he 
thoroughly consecrated himself to the discharge of 
his public duties. He was able and as modest as able. 

Leslie M. Shaw : A good man and a great statesman, 
without dissimulation and with no thought of guile. 
I have not known a greater statesman than Orville H. 
Piatt. 

Simeon E. Baldwin : Senator Piatt took his election 
to the Senate not as a reward to be enjoyed, but as an 
opportunity to be made the most of. In committee 
work and out of committee he was a faithful worker. 
He entered on old age without claiming its privileges 
and without feeling its weaknesses, I am inclined 



6o2 Orville H. Piatt 

to think that his influence was greater, his position 
higher, after he had passed the age of seventy than 
it had ever been. . . . Such a Hfe makes one feel how 
superior is the individual to his circumstances. Nar- 
row means, a scanty education, hard toil on a rock 
farm — these were the beginnings from which Senator 
Piatt advanced to a great station, to fill it well. . . . 
We who live most of us in a university town, most 
of us the sons of the university, are sometimes in 
danger of over-estimating what a university can 
give. It can not give talent nor supply its place. 
The native God-given faculty in every man who makes 
his mark has been his best inheritance. It is of an 
elevated kind, it can attract education to itself, like 
a magnet, whatever be the course of life he may pursue. 
It was so that Senator Piatt became his own teacher, 
and from his youth up his horizon was always extend- 
ing. Such men may well do their best work last. 

In the eulogies spoken in the Senate and in the House 
a year after his death, there was a note of sincerity 
and deep feeling which made the occasion memorable 
among ceremonies of the kind. His former associates 
dwelt not only upon the abihty of Mr. Piatt as a legis- 
lator, but also upon his personal quaHties, his unselfish- 
ness, his faculty of co-operation, his capacity for 
friendship. 

In the House on April 14, 1906, the speakers were 
Sperry, Hill, Henry, Higgins and Lilley of Connecticut, 
Sherman and Payne of New York, Grosvenor of Ohio, 
and Clark of Missouri. 

In the Senate on April 2 1 st the speakers were Bulkeley 
and Brandegee of Connecticut, Allison of Iowa, Morgan 
of Alabama, Teller of Colorado, Aldrich of Rhode 



Words Fitly Spoken 603 

Island, Lodge of Massachusetts, Daniel of Virginia, 
Perkins of California, Nelson of Minnesota, Beveridge 
of Indiana, and Kean of New Jersey. 

Thus, men representing every shade of political 
opinion and all sections of the country bore tribute. 

The address of Senator Lodge was so discriminating 
and disclosed so fine an appreciation of Mr. Piatt's 
character that it is given here in its entirety, while 
significant passages have been selected from other 
eulogies. 

Address of Mr. Lodge 

Mr. President, among the remarkable men who framed 
the Constitution of the United States, two of the most 
conspicuous were Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, 
delegates from the State of Connecticut. To them, and 
particularly to the former, was due the great compromise 
which preserved the power of the States in the new sys- 
tem by securing to them equality of representation in the 
Senate, to which was due, more than to any other one con- 
dition, the success of the Philadelphia Convention and its 
complete, but narrow, escape from failure and defeat. The 
provision thus adopted in regard to the basis of representa- 
tion in the Senate and the House was known as the "Con- 
necticut Compromise," in honor of the men whose skill, 
foresight, and ability brought it into existence. Both 
Sherman and Ellsworth subsequently became Senators 
and helped to organize the new Government which the 
Constitution had called into being. To Ellsworth, who 
was afterwards Chief Justice and one of the commissioners 
who made the peace with France, we also owe the Judiciary 
act — a law which has so long withstood the test of time and 
of changing conditions that it seems to-day to possess al- 
most the fixity and sanctity of the Constitution itself. 

Neither Sherman nor Ellsworth was a brilliant orator like 
Patrick Henry, nor a great administrator and leader like 



6o4 Orville H. Piatt 

Hamilton, nor a consummate party chief and political 
manager like Jefferson. They were public men of large 
ability and strong character, pre-eminently constructive 
statesmen of the Hamiltonian school who left enduring 
monuments of their wisdom and foresight in the Constitu- 
tion which they helped to frame, and in the laws which 
they placed upon the statute book. 

Men, however, of such unusual character and strong 
mental qualities as Sherman and Ellsworth leave their 
mark not merely upon the legislation and the history of 
their time, but upon the minds of the communities in which 
they live, a very lasting memorial, for habits of mind, al- 
though as impalpable as air, are often more imperishable 
than stone or bronze. 

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
Of princes shall outlive the powerful rhyme" — 

said the greatest of all poets. The rhyme of the poet is but 
words, words are but the thoughts of men grown articulate, 
and yet he who shapes and influences the thoughts and 
imagination of men leaves in his due proportion a monu- 
ment which will endure when iron has rusted and marble 
crumbled away. 

The community which produced Sherman and Ells- 
worth was naturally extremely apt to receive the impress 
of their influence, and these two men stamped themselves 
deeply upon the modes of thought and upon the instinctive 
mental attitude toward great questions of the people of 
Connecticut who had given them to the nation and to the 
public service. Those who came after them insensibly 
followed the path their great predecessors had marked out, 
and although questions changed and new issues arose, the 
habit of mind and mode of thought remained unaltered. 
Nature, we are told, is careful of the type, no matter how 
indifferent she may be to the individual, and certain it is 
that in communities of strong character and salient qualities 



Words Fitly Spoken 605 

of intellect habits of thought not only endure, but the type 
is reproduced. The type may not be continuous, but it is 
almost unfailingly recurrent. 

It always seemed to me as I watched Senator Piatt, 
listened to his speeches, and passed in my relations with 
him from acquaintance to friendship, that I recognized 
in him the qualities and the statesmanship of Roger Sher- 
man and Oliver Ellsworth. When, a few years ago, I had 
occasion to make a study of Ellsworth's career, I felt sure 
that I understood him and realized what manner of man 
he was because I knew Senator Piatt. 

This type, which I had thus found in history and then 
met in daily life, is as fine as it is strong, and comes out as 
admirably in its modern exemplar as in those which illus- 
trated the great period of Constitution making and of the 
upbuilding of the National Government. Senator Piatt was 
conspicuously a man of reserved force and of calm reason. 
I have seen the calmness disappear in the presence of what 
he believed imported either evil to the repubhc or wrong 
to man, but I never saw the wisdom of his counsels, no 
matter how much he may have been moved, distorted or 
disturbed. Naturally a , lover of all the traditions of 
ordered liberty and obedience to law in which he had been 
reared, and which were ingrained in his nature, he was as 
far removed as possible from the stagnation and reactionary 
tendencies which too often injure and discredit conserva- 
tism. Because he clung to that which was good was never 
a reason with him for resisting change. On the contrary, 
he sought and urged improvement always. The service he 
rendered in the case of the Copyright law was but one in- 
stance among many of his well-directed zeal in behalf of 
civiHzation and of an enlightened progress which should 
keep pace with the march of events. His mind was too 
constructive ever to be content with immobility or to 
accept the optimism satirized by Voltaire, that "whatever 
is, is right. " He wished to make the world better and the 
hves of men happier, and he knew this could not be done 



6o6 Orville H. Piatt 

by doggedly and unreasoningly resisting all change and 
all advances merely because he revered the principles long 
ago established and had abiding faith in the foundations 
of free government laid deep and strong by the fathers 
of the Republic. In nearly all the important legislation 
which went to enactment during his long career of public 
service, those who will take the trouble to study the records 
will find the sure trace of his unobtrusive but strong and 
shaping hand. One great achievement of constructive 
statesmanship which is not only fixed among our laws, 
but which has become part of the constitution of another 
country, bears his honored name. Yet there are many 
more like unto it and scarcely less important in which he 
bore a leading part or which were due to him alone that 
have no name attached to them and the true authorship 
of which will only be revealed to the future student of 
history when he is delving for material among the dry dust 
of dead debates. 

To be anonymous in his work was much more charac- 
teristic of Mr. Piatt than to affix his signature where all men 
might read it. He seemed to me not only to care less for 
self-advertising, but to be more ^averse to it than almost 
any public man I ever knew. He longed for results, and 
was finely indifferent when it came to the partition of the 
credit for obtaining them. This is a phase of mind, a 
kind of personal pride and self-respect, not unworthy of 
consideration, for it is sufficiently rare in these days of 
ours, so flooded with news and so overwhelmed by easy 
printing, I do not think Mr. Piatt ever reasoned the 
matter out and then rested, satisfied that lasting fame and 
a place in the history of the time had no relation whatever 
to the noisy notoriety of the passing hour, with its deafen- 
ing clamors ever ringing in our ears. It was simply part 
of his own nature, because ostentation in all its forms was 
distasteful to him and because he shrank from exhibiting 
himself, his emotions, or his works as sedulously as some 
men strive to avoid anything which resembles retirement 



Words Fitly Spoken 607 

or privacy. His industry was unflagging, and, again, in 
small things as in great, in defeating a doubtful claim as 
in building up a great law, he sought results and nothing 
else. If he could pass the measure he desired he was more 
than glad to dispense with making a speech. If he could 
defeat an obnoxious bill by an objection, or throw out a bad 
amendment on a point of order, he was quite content to 
avoid debate; but if debate was necessary, he was as for- 
midable as a lucid, trained, legal mind, coupled with full 
information and a power of vigorous, clear statement, 
could make him. He was thorough in all he undertook — 
as effective in the endless complications of a great tariff 
as in guarding against the perils which beset our Indian 
legislation. Outside this chamber his services to the 
Indians, and to the good name and credit of the United 
States in its dealings with those difficult and helpless 
savages, performed during many years of unremitting 
toil as a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, will 
never be rightly valued or understood. It was the kind 
of hard, self-sacrificing work for the sake of the right and 
to help others which must be in itself and in the doing 
thereof its own great and sufficient reward. 

I have tried to indicate very imperfectly those qualities 
which seem to me especially to distinguish Senator Piatt as 
a statesman, for a statesman of high rank he most certainly 
was. But I am well aware that I have dwelt almost 
exclusively upon his effectiveness, his indifference to self- 
advertisement, and his unremitting pursuit of results, and 
have passed by many of the qualities which went to make 
up the man and to account for his large success. His 
great ability, his power of work, his knowledge, his sense 
of justice, his fearlessness in the battle with wrong, his 
capacity for working with other men, were all con- 
spicuous in Mr. Piatt, and all necessary to the distin- 
guished achievements of his life. He possessed also a 
very much rarer gift in his complete retention of that 
flexibility which is so apt to diminish as men advance 



6o8 Orville H. Piatt 

in life. The mind, like the muscles, tends to stiffen as 
we grow older, and only too frequently no effort is made 
to avoid the consequent rigidity. Both mind and muscle 
will go on performing most admirably the particular 
functions to which they have been accustomed, but they 
both alike recoil from a new idea or an unwonted exertion. 
From all this Mr. Piatt was extraordinarily free. Neither 
his age nor his natural conservatism hindered the move- 
ments of his mind or made him shrink from a new idea or 
tremble and draw back from an unexpected situation. In 
the last ten years of his hfe he saw sudden and vast changes 
in the relations of the United States to the rest of the world 
and in our national responsibiHties. He did not hide from 
them or shut his eyes and try to repel them. He met the 
new conditions not only with the flexibihty, but with the 
keen interest of youth, while at the same time he brought 
to the solution of the new problems all the wisdom of a 
long experience. He did not turn away with dark fore- 
bodings from the startHng changes which the rush of hurry- 
ing events swept suddenly upon us, but confronted them 
with a cheerful heart, a smile upon his Hps, and a firm faith 
in the future of his people and of his country. 

"We knew him not? Ah, well we knew 
The manly soul, so brave, so true, 
The cheerful heart that conquered age, 
The child-like silver-bearded sage." 

A very fine public career ended when Senator Piatt died. 
In him we lost a statesman of a type which the country 
can ill spare, a thorough American type which we may well 
pray to have sustained and renewed among us. It is not 
a type which certain ephemeral defamers, just now very 
vocal, admire; but it is to statesmen of this precise kind 
and stature that we owe in largest measure the foundation 
and organization of our Government and the ordered liberty 
and individual freedom which have made the United States 



Words Fitly Spoken 609 

what it is to-day. Senator Piatt was a man who was at 
once an honor to the country which he served and guided 
and a vindication of our faith in a government of the people 
who chose him as representative of themselves. 

I have spoken of Senator Piatt only as a public man. 
But to us here his death is much more than a public loss. 
He was our friend. Those who come after us will know of 
his public services, of the work he did, of the large place 
he filled in the history of the time; but we also remember, 
and shall never forget, the honesty of heart and mind, the 
simplicity and purity of life, the humor, the love of books 
and sound learning, and, above all, the kindness which 
never failed and the loyalty which never faltered. Others 
may, with full faith in the destitiy of the republic, we can 
confidently say, others will come to take up and carry on 
the public work to which his life was given, but the place 
which the tried and trusted friend has left empty in our 
affections can not again be filled. 

Mr. Bulkeley 

The dignity of his presence always gave an added interest 
to the gatherings of the people, the earnestness of his man- 
ner commanded the close attention of his hearers, and the 
moral lessons which he never failed to inculcate, and the 
influence of a godly Christian character, which he deemed 
so essential to the welfare of society and for which his own 
personal hfe was so conspicuous, furnished ample food for 
thought and reflection. 

The people of Connecticut never failed in their confidence 
or loyalty to their Senator. His whole pubHc hfe of 
untiring industry, sterling integrity, and devotion to duty 
realized their expectations when they selected him from 
their own ranks to represent them in the council chamber 
of the nation, and confirmed his own declaration at the 
outset of his Senatorial hfe: " I shall try to do right as I 
see the right." 
39 



6io Orville H. Piatt 

Senator Piatt rounded out his service in this body as 
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of which he had 
previously been a member, and as your presiding officer on 
one of those rare occasions in the history of our country 
that this Senate has been called upon to exercise its 
constitutional judicial functions. His work of accomplish- 
ment ended with the Fifty-eighth Congress and the short 
executive session that followed. He closed his great career 
with an unsullied record and reputation, the peer of the 
honored Connecticut Senators, Ellsworth, Sherman, John- 
son, Trumbull, Buckingham, and others who preceded 
him. 

His last public act was to participate in the legislative 
memorial exercises at the State Capitol, in Hartford, in 
memory of his long-time friend and colleague; friends 
when "creeds could not bind the consciences of such men. 
They found a law higher than creeds; they inquired only 
their duty to God and man, and did their duty as they 
saw it." 

His none too rugged frame had wearied in its work, the 
throbbing heart pulse was to him the prophetic warning 
of a near reunion and renewed activities in the life beyond, 
as he depicted in loving, tender words his graceful tribute to 
the Hfe and character of Connecticut's idol soldier and 
statesman that had already entered into the new life; it 
was a "Good-by" and not a farewell. 

The needed rest and recreation he sought in his home in 
his native town, "httle Washington, " as he would designate 
it, but the coveted rest never came until "he slept with 
the fathers." 

He had honorably filled his own place both in private 
and public life, and left behind an imperishable name to 
illumine the annals of his State and nation. He had fought 
the good fight and kept the faith; with an unclouded mind, 
with a characteristic faith, and an undimmed eye he had 
seen in an awakening vision 



Words Fitly Spoken 6ii 

"An angel, writing in a book of gold; 
Exceeding peace had made him (Ben Adhem) bold, 
And to the presence in his room he said: 
' What writest thou ? ' The vision raised its head 
And with a look made all of sweet accord 
Answer'd: 'The names of those who love the Lord.' 
'And is mine one?' said he (Adhem). 'Nay, not so,' 
Replied the angel. He spoke more low, 
But cheerily still, and said: 'I pray thee, then, 
Write me as one who loves his fellow-men.' 
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 
It came again, with a great wakening light. 
And show'd the names whom love of God had bless'd, 
And lo! his (Ben Adhem's) name led all the rest." 

He fell asleep 

April twenty-first, nineteen hundred and five, 

Washington, Connecticut. 

Mr. Brandegee 

He was a leader. He did not lead because he tried to 
lead, but because the people followed him. He did not 
lead because he pretended to be the special friend of the 
people, as demagogues are wont to do, but because he 
laid his course by his own compass, and that compass 
always pointed to the true pole. ... He was no theorist. 
He was not a doctrinaire. He had none of the traits of 
the visionary or the mystic. He dreamed no dreams and 
he pursued no chimeras. He insisted upon the facts. He 
was virile and powerful, mentally and physically. His 
appearance was most impressive. He was cast in the 
patriarchal mould. He towered to a height of six feet and 
four inches, and his frame and head were as massive and 
rugged as the granite ledges and crags of his native 
Litchfield County. 

His features were large and somewhat furrowed, and 
to those who saw him for the first time his countenance was 
apt to convey a suggestion of austerity. But this effect 



6i2 Orville H. Piatt 

was relieved by the saving grace of a delicious sense of 
humor and an inimitable twinkle of the eye. His manner 
was deliberate, and he was well balanced and at all times 
perfectly self-controlled. He was patient, industrious, 
kindly, cautious, and sound. He was pre-eminently safe 
and sane. His judgment was excellent and his gift of 
common sense approached to genius. His temperament 
was judicial, and he clearly perceived and carefully weighed 
every phase of a question. With his clear vision he pene- 
trated the heart of every problem and discriminated with 
unerring precision between the vital principles upon which 
a correct solution depended and the irrelevant and delusive 
matters which confuse other minds. He was possessed 
of an intuitive sense as to the wisest course to pursue, 
which was so accurate as to amount almost to prescience. 
He despised shams, hypocrisy, and pretence. He was 
straightforward, sincere, and reliable. He was a man 
of sterling integrity, and was as honest with himself as 
with his fellows. It was as impossible to deceive him as 
it was for him to attempt to deceive others. He was 
inspired with high ideals and was endowed with a deep 
religious nature. His logical mind moved with the mathe- 
matical accuracy of an adding machine, and the most com- 
plicated questions were reduced and clarified in the fervent 
crucible of his intellectual analysis. He was intensely 
human and was always glad to cloak the faults of others 
with the broad mantle of charity. He was passionately 
fond of nature. The sound of the brooks tumbling down 
their rocky beds, the rustle of the leaves in the woods, the 
songs of birds, the voices of the wild things, the variegated 
tints of the foliage, the odors of flower and fern and moist 
glade, the sunshine and shadow, the dying monarch of the 
forest and the springing bud, the sunset skies, the majesty 
of the snow-capped mountain, the abyss of the dark canyon, 
the rolling prairie, the river sweeping away into the dis- 
tance, the vast and heaving ocean — all these spoke to him 
in a language of music and poetry to which every fibre 



Words Fitly Spoken 613 

of his soul was attuned and to which it responded with 
joy and gratitude. 

Among all the honors, the battles, and the triumphs of 
his life, continued far beyond the threescore years and ten 
allotted by the Psalmist, the home of his boyhood and the 
wild scenery and stalwart people of his native Litchfield 
County lay closest to his heart. In the free, open air of 
this beautiful section, as he whipped the brooks and hunted 
its game, he developed that magnificent character which 
never knew a stain and that splendid courage which never 
surrendered a principle. Here he imbibed that wholesome 
nature, that childlike faith, that moral standard and 
stamina, that indomitable will, that fine perception, that 
shrewd insight, that independence and love of personal 
liberty, which made him a tower of strength and a very 
present help in time of trouble. 

Mr. President, in the death of Senator Piatt Connecticut 
lost her ablest and most distinguished public servant, this 
body one of its wisest and most trusted counsellors, and 
the nation one of its soundest statesmen. He always dared 
to act as he believed. He never compromised with ex- 
pediency. He was a great man — in stature, in brain, in 
character, in influence, in deeds, and in righteousness. 

Mr. Beveridge 

All who knew him intimately were agreed that the 
amazing youthfulness of his mind was by far his most 
notable mental characteristic. Old as he was, he attacked 
new problems with the eager strength of young manhood's 
mental vitality, solved them with young manhood's faith. 
He never doubted the wisdom, righteousness, and power 
of the American people. He believed devoutly, unques- 
tioningly in their mission and destiny in the world. Who 
that heard will ever forget his instantaneous and unpre- 
pared reply to the venerable Senator from Massachusetts 
on our duty in the Philippines and our certain future in 



6i4 Orville H. Piatt 

the Orient and the world ? How like a prophet of the olden 
time he seemed that evening, as with eyes glowing with 
religious fire and voice ringing trumpet-clear as the voice 
of youth, he delivered with passionate earnestness that 
inspired speech. ... It was with this youthful vigor, 
vision, and undoubtingness that Senator Piatt solved the 
Cuban question. There was no precedent. He made 
one. Ordinary intelligence can cite precedents and apply 
decided cases to like situations. It needs greatness to 
create by sheer thought solutions of unheard-of problems. 
And that is what Senator Piatt did in the immortal Piatt 
Amendment, which, written in our statutes and incor- 
porated in the Cuban constitution, established over that 
island the indestructible suzerainty of the republic — all 
for the good and safety of the Cuban and the American 
people alike. ... It was nothing to him that men should 
remember or observe what he said or did ; it was everything 
to him that his word and deed accomplished something for 
his country. And so he was fearless and pure and wise 
and brave ; his life without stain, his course without varia- 
bleness or shadow of turning. It was this conception of 
duty, vitalizing and consecrating his great intellect, that 
made him the ideal statesman of the American people. 

Mr. Aldrich 

. . . He was simple and just by nature, able, intelligent, 
courageous, and wise with the wisdom that dominates 
and controls. 

Although he was by nature intensely practical and shrank 
instinctively from anything like pretence and cant, yet 
in thought and action he always adopted the highest 
possible standards and invariably followed the highest 
ideals. I venture the assertion that no man ever held a 
membership in the Senate who had to a greater extent the 
confidence and esteem of his associates than the late 
Senator Piatt. 



Words Fitly Spoken 615 

I can not refrain from saying a few words with reference 
to our personal relations. The fact that we represented 
adjoining States, whose industries and material interests 
were practically identical, was not the cause, but rather 
an incident to our warm personal friendship. Throughout 
its existence there was, on my part, a constant growth of 
admiration and affection for the man. In every phase of 
my work here I found his counsel most helpful. In his 
death I am conscious of the loss of a dear friend, who was, 
all in all the best man I ever knew, 

Mr. Morgan 

His forceful, successful, and controlling leadership in the 
Senate, without any manifestation of ambitious impulses 
or purposes, signalizes Senator Orville H. Piatt as being 
a model American Senator, whose example, now that he is 
gone, is worth nearly as much to the Senate and the country 
as his unfailing labors were worth while he lived. . . . 

Senator Piatt was, in outward seeming, to those who 
did not know the shrinking modesty of his nature, a man 
of marble, cold and polished in statuesque dignity, with 
little love for his kind. In fact, he was so tender a lover 
of all who were suffering affliction or were in danger of the 
visitations of wrong and injustice that his chief joy in life 
was in giving them comfort and strength and in lifting 
their hopes above despair. 

Mr. Nelson 

... He was trusted and relied upon in every great 
legislative emergency, for his wisdom and conservatism 
were so pronounced and so familiar to all. He was the 
fairest legislator I have ever met, modest and without any 
personal pride. It sometimes happened, though less often 
than with other men, that he, in the first instance, might 
misjudge or misapprehend the merits of a measure, but if 
he did, he was ever ready to be corrected, and when 



6i6 Orville H. Piatt 

convinced of his mistake he was not merely content to 
acknowledge the mistake, but he became zealous to make 
full amends, and this was a trait that endeared him to so 
many of his associates. . . . 

The moral influence of Senator Piatt was even greater 
than his intellectual force and power. He impressed 
every one who came in contact with him that he was ac- 
tuated by the highest and noblest motives in all his efforts. 
No one ever questioned or doubted his honesty, his in- 
tegrity, and the purity of his motives. There was a serene 
calmness, coupled with clearness and earnestness, in his 
deliberations and in his speeches. He was no legislative 
specialist with only a single hobby or a single line of work. 
He was equipped for and devoted to every great line of 
legislative work in a greater measure than most of his 
colleagues; and above all he gave his entire heart and 
energy to the work in hand. All that was his he gave to his 
country with a whole heart and without any reservation. 

Mr. Perkins 

We all know the singleness of purpose with which he 
grappled with all great questions. The patient study that 
he devoted to them was for the sole purpose of arriving 
at the truth, for, like the trained scientist, he knew that 
truth alone will make a stable foundation for legislation, 
and that without truth at the bottom all legislation is 
worse than the falsehood on which it is based. This was 
the cause of that laborious, patient, unceasing study of 
financial, social, and political problems which come before 
us for solution, and was the means of storing his mind with 
facts which served as signposts on the road to that goal 
which he always sought — the best interests of the people 
of the United States. It was this quality of thoroughness 
which made him a guide in whom all could place confidence 
and whom we could follow with the assurance that we could 
not go far astray. I think every Senator will say that 



Words Fitly Spoken 617 

during his service here with Orvillc H. Piatt he has ob- 
served no one of his colleagues who was so vigilant in 
watching the course of legislation, so sure to discover 
dangers, and so prompt to apply remedies. 

Mr. S perry 

His modesty and his retiring disposition stood in his 
way. He cared nothing for the transient fame that most 
men strive for. He sought and obtained the high regard 
of his own colleagues, the best judges of his ability. So 
when the serious problems growing out of the Spanish 
War confronted us, especially with regard to the future of 
Cuba, it was no surprise to those who had watched Senator 
Piatt for twenty years to find that upon him devolved the 
task of solving the complex question of our relations with 
the island of Cuba. . . . Throughout his busy life he 
continued the even tenor of his way, looking always straight 
ahead, never caring one iota for public praise or censure. 
He knew he always did his duty as he saw it, and he felt 
confident the people who showered political honors upon 
him would rightly estimate the spirit and value of his 
work. And they did, 

Mr. Hill 

When the Republic of Hawaii was organized, the first 
Minister to this country chanced to be a personal friend 
of mine. Soon after his arrival at Washington he asked 
me to procure an interview for him With the senior Senator 
from Connecticut. On Senator Piatt's suggestion the 
interview was held in a closed carriage on that same even- 
ing, and, as the driver wandered aimlessly for nearly three 
hours about the streets of Washington, inside of that 
carriage questions were put and answers given, policies 
discussed and conclusions reached, which ultimately 
brought Hawaii under the sovereignty of the United States 
as an organized Territory. 



6i8 Orville H. Piatt 

Leaving the Minister at his home, I took the Senator to 
his hotel, and as he stepped from the carriage he said: 
"I guess the time has come when we must think about 
entering upon some form of a colonial system." From 
that day the one absorbing thought of his life was the rela- 
tion which the United States, the dominant power of the 
Western Hemisphere, should hold to the weaker continen- 
tal powers and the islands in the two oceans which wash 
our shores; and when a little later the war with Spain had 
thrown upon us the responsibility of Cuba, Porto Rico, and 
the Philippines, and statesmen doubted as to the right of 
a representative republic to hold control and sovereignty 
of unrepresented peoples, he demonstrated beyond cavil 
or dispute, in a speech of wonderful simplicity but mar- 
vellous strength, that the United States possessed in- 
herently, as well as under its Constitution, all of the rights 
and powers pertaining to any absolutely independent 
sovereign nation. The Piatt Amendment to the Cuban 
constitution was only a practical application of the prin- 
ciples enunciated in the earlier speech, and it is entirely 
safe to say, that as Abraham Lincoln demonstrated to 
the world the right of the republic to preserve its own 
life against attacks from within, so it is due to Orville H. 
Piatt, as much as to any other one man, that the United 
States stands forth among the powers of the world to-day 
the equal of any in every right, in every privilege, in every 
degree and kind of sovereignty, and lacking in no respect 
in any prerogative enjoyed or claimed by any other. If 
he had done nothing else but this in his twenty-six years of 
service in the Senate, he would have left his imprint on 
the history of his time. 



APPENDIX 
I 

MEMORIAL RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE CONNECTICUT 

GENERAL ASSEMBLY AT THE JANUARY SESSION 

NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIVE 

Resolved, by this Assembly, That in the death of Orville 
H. Platt the people of this State experience a heartfelt 
grief, and are deeply sensible of the loss which they have 
thereby sustained. 

In his removal from us, the State has been deprived of 
the services of a tried and faithful public servant, who has 
discharged with conspicuous ability the onerous duties 
that for more than a quarter of a century have rested upon 
him as a Senator in the Congress of the United States from 
this Commonwealth. 

Throughout his long public service, both in the positions 
of honor and trust to which he was called by his constitu- 
ents before being chosen by the people of Connecticut to 
represent them in the United States Senate, and during 
his continuous service in that body for twenty-six years last 
past, by virtue of five consecutive elections to the post of 
honor, he has ever been true to every trust reposed in him. 

His attainment to the highest plane of true statesman- 
ship, by unselfish and patriotic effort and unwavering fidel- 
ity to the pubHc interest, earned universal recognition and 
praise from the country at large, and has reflected credit 
and honor upon this State. 

Connecticut people, especially, have, with ever increasing 
appreciation, followed his course of steady and substantial 

619 



620 Orville H. Piatt 

growth and development to the commanding position of 
influence which he exercised at the seat of government. 

The feehng of our people towards Orville H. Piatt, as 
in his advanced years he still bore the heat and burden 
of the day in the discharge of his responsible duties cannot 
be measured by that of mere appreciation and respect, but 
was and is more akin to love ; and the memory of his simple 
and winning personality, and his earnest devotion to the 
interest of the State and of the country will long linger in 
the memory of a grateful people. 

Resolved, That this resolution be engrossed, and that 
a copy thereof be sent to the family of the deceased Senator, 
and that this resolution be printed in the journals of the 
Senate and the House of Representatives. 



Attest: 



Alfred B. Baldwin, 
John A. Spafford, 

Clerks. 



II 



MESSAGE OF GOVERNOR ROBERTS ANNOUNCING TO THE 
GENERAL ASSEMBLY THE DEATH OF MR. PLATT 

It is my sad duty to notify you of the death on Friday 
evening, April 21st, at Washington, Conn., of Senator 
Orville Hitchcock Piatt, thereby causing a vacancy in the 
representation of the State of Connecticut in the United 
States Senate. 

The death of Senator Piatt is a loss to this State and to 
this nation. Connecticut mourns a representative in 
Congress whom she has honored and trusted, and our 
common country will miss a valued counsellor, an unselfish 
public servant, and a wise statesman. 

Senator Piatt was bom in the town in which he died, 
July 19, 1827. Our common schools provided him a means 



Appendix 62 r 

of education and an able lawyer of his own county prepared 
him for admission to the Bar of this State. 

Immediately upon his entrance on the active duties of 
his profession he was called by his fellow townsmen in 
Meriden to serve them as Judge of its Probate Court. 

In 1855 he was elected Clerk of the Connecticut Senate; in 
1857, Secretary of the State; 1861-2, State Senator; in 1864 
and in 1869, Representative in the Legislature, serving in 
the latter year as Speaker of the House, and in 1877 he was 
appointed State's Attorney for New Haven County. 

In all these positions he displayed the qualities of lead- 
ership, high-minded purpose, and a personal character which 
won him the respect of all whom he served. He became 
recognized as a wise man to follow and a safe man to trust. 

In the year 1879 he was elected to the office of represen- 
tative of the State of Connecticut in the Senate of the United 
States. In 1885, 1891, 1897, and 1903 he was re-elected 
to this high ofhce by the General Assembly of this State. 

For these honors which this State took pleasure in giving 
him, he returned a service devoted to her highest interests 
and a cordial espousal of all her just issues. 

His career in the United States Senate has been long. 
Each year he grew in effective service. The desire that 
his country should always pursue the course that seemed 
to his Christian conscience to be right, combined with his 
abiUty, industry, tact, and experience, gradually brought 
him to a high position in her councils and he became one 
of her statesmen, perhaps trusted and followed beyond 
the most of his associates. 

His Hfe has been pure and useful. He was courteous 
and helpful; simple in Hving, with a deep faith in the on- 
moving purpose of God, and a Christian gentleman whose 
memory and influence this State and nation will long 

cherish. 

His funeral is to be held at Washington, Conn., this 

afternoon at one-thirty o'clock. 

As a token of respect to his memory I recommend that 



622 Orville H. Piatt 

your honorable body adjourn for the day and take any other 
action that may seem to you fitting and proper. 

Ill 

MEMORIALS IN BRONZE 

The State of Connecticut by acts of 1905 and 1907 
appropriated $25,000 to erect in the Capitol grounds at 
Hartford a memorial to Senator Piatt, provision being 
made at the same time for a memorial to General Hawley. 
For the Piatt memorial a commission was created consist- 
ing of H, Wales Lines of Meriden, President, Albiram 
Chamberlain of Meriden, John H. Whittemore of Nauga- 
tuck, Lewis Sperry of South Windsor, Charles L. Hubbard 
of Norwich, and William J. Ford of Washington, together 
with the Commission of Sculpture, which at that time 
consisted of Kirk H. Leavens of Norwich, Charles Noll 
Flagg and Arthur L. Shipman of Hartford, Henry W. 
Farnam and Bernadotte Ferine of New Haven, and Robert 
Scoville of Salisbury. On the death of Dr. Ford, E. K. 
Rossiter of Washington was appointed to the vacancy. 
Burton Mansfield of New Haven was appointed to fill 
the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Scoville and 
H. Siddons Mowbray of Washington to fill that caused by 
the death of Mr. Leavens. The commission have accepted 
the design of H. A. MacNeil. the American sculptor, — 
a medallion in bronze with marble border, about eight 
feet in diameter, representing the Senator in high relief 
seated at his desk. The medallion will be placed on the 
wall at the right of the principal entrance to the State 
Capitol. 

A beautiful and appropriate bronze tablet, the work 
of A. Bertram Pegram, an English sculptor, has been 
placed in the library building on Washington Green, the 
gift of Mr. E. H. Van Ingen of New York, a friend and 
summer neighbor of Senator Piatt. 



Appendix 623 

IV 

THE PLATT NATIONAL PARK 

The Piatt National Park is in the southwest comer of 
the "Chickasaw Nation," Indian Territory — now merged 
in the new State of Oklahoma. It comprises 848 acres of 
land, and abounds in trees of nearly every description, 
hills, dales, ravines, cliffs, and boulders of a pre-historic age. 
The reservation was set aside by treaty with the Choctaw 
and Chickasaw tribes of Indians, through the efforts of 
Senator Piatt, so that the springs and creeks might be 
preserved forever for the benefit of the whites and Indians. 

In 1906, Congress by special act bestowed upon this 
reservation the name of Piatt National Park as a memorial 
to the Connecticut Senator. 

V 

THE JUDGMENT OF THE PRESS 

Hartford Courant 

Mr. Piatt's career in the Senate has been one of steady 
growth in influence and usefulness. It will probably not 
do to describe him as a brilliant man, although now and 
then a most delightful humor and a quick Yankee wit 
showed themselves in his utterances. But he was always 
safe and wise, and his associates came to trust him more 
and more. They were sure of his motives and never 
had to look for the selfish or ulterior purpose. His clients 
were the State of Connecticut and the United States of 
America. His judgments vindicated themselves so often that 
their soundness ceased to be questioned, and he stepped into 
his position of leadership, not through pushing ambition, but 
simply by the right of recognition. He led, because others 
wanted to follow such a man. The great measures with which 
his name is associated show the influence he possessed. 

Personally, Mr. Piatt was a model of tact. His industry 
was inexhaustible. He was a "working member" from 
the start. If something was to be done, Mr. Piatt was the 
man to do it. He had the happy gift of remembering 



624 Orville H. Piatt 

faces and people, and so escaped from many of the troubles 
that came upon his colleague, General Hawley, who forgot 
letters, faces, and people themselves, and often lost friends 
thereby, although he really carried in his heart only the 
kindest sentiments toward all mankind. Hawley had to 
fight for most of his re-elections, while to all appearances 
Piatt's came to him without a contest. It is true that there 
were occasions when the riot act had to be read to those 
who wanted to shove him aside; but it was heard and 
heeded. He was so strong that a contest was manifestly 
useless. Start the rumor that an attempt was to be made 
against him, and the State sizzled with indignation. So 
it came about that he was elected five times, an honor 
Connecticut has never conferred on any other of her sons. 

Mr. Piatt was equal to his opportunity. When he was so 
unexpectedly elected, not a few disappointed observers 
set him down for a clever politician and an ordinary 
lawyer, and doubted if he was able to fill the bill. He re- 
mained to the end a clever politician, and was so recognized 
all through the State; but he developed finely into con- 
stitutional lawyer, expounder, orator, and statesman, a 
great man among those in highest places. Doubt among 
observers gave way to pride, and the whole State was his 
and he was its. 

Piatt and Hawley made a splendid working team. They 
were different in many respects and sometimes differed in 
opinion and consequently in vote, but they were always 
together in the most friendly relations, and those who 
heard Mr. Piatt's tribute to his colleague the other day 
at the State-house will always remember its sweetness and 
sincerity and the grief as for a brother that so shook him 
as he spoke. Few of^us thought as he stood there, tall, 
straight, and apparently as well as he had been for years, 
that so soon his turn would come. 

For many years Piatt and Hawley stood together there 
at Washington, two big men for one little State, making 
their State big by the strength they gave to its voice in 



Appendix 625 

affairs. General Hawley began to die several years ago, 
and his retirement was natural and inevitable ; but the fall 
of Senator Piatt is a sudden and altogether uncx|)cctcd 
calamity, and its extent is not to be measured olThaud at 
the moment. We all mourn together. The State has 
lost her foremost citizen. The public calamity is also a 
widespread private grief. We doubt if any other man in 
Connecticut was so beloved. Gentle, approachable, cordial, 
and always helpful, he was the friend of us all. It is a 
great thing for the State to have had his splendid services 
for so long — and it is a great loss to be deprived of them. 
But he has done the work, not of one man only, but of 
many, in his long and useful hfe, and he is entitled to his 
rest, and entitled to the high place he will take in the roll 
of great men whom this State has given to the nation. 

Waterbury American 

Senator Piatt's life has furnished a remarkable example 
of gradual and constant mental development. Every 
year has been a little stronger, a little wiser, a httle better, 
than the last. His latest years were therefore his best, 
and he dies at the very height of his mental powers and 
when his influence was greatest. He met the responsi- 
bilities of to-day so well that new and heavier ones were 
put upon him to-morrow, and they have increased and 
grown until he has become one of the pillars of the national 
temple. He made Connecticut the foremost State in 
influence in the United States Senate. He was the most 
progressive mind among the older men in that body, doing 
his best to free it from the chains of rule and habit that made 
action difficult and gave each member power to thwart 
all the rest. 

Waterbury Republican 

He had genius — that genius which the philosopher has 
defined as the abihty to work hard; an abihty that devel- 
40 



626 Orville H. Piatt 

ops character, that makes brave and resourceful men, not 
afraid to grapple with the most perplexing and sometimes 
seemingly insurmountable problems and to go deep into 
them, that begets self-confidence through successful ex- 
perience, and earns popular confidence by solid deeds 
accomplished. We do not need to apologize for the 
absence of brilliancy in such a man, as if it were something 
lacking in him. He was better off without it, for he trusted, 
not in the inspirations of a mind that flashes good or bad 
ideas, but upon careful thought and a rich experience earned 
with toil. An Ingalls arouses our admiration and plaudits 
for a time, and passes away. A Piatt grows wiser and more 
dependable every day of his life and dies in the harness. 

Meriden Record 

The life work of Senator Piatt is like a mosaic. Each 
tiny piece fits perfectly into its companion, making an 
artistic and practical whole which challenges admiration. 
There have always been a sequence and a proportion about 
Senator Piatt's words and deeds which have compelled re- 
spect. Never did he act first and think afterwards. This 
logical reasoning and dispassionate thinking led him to oc- 
cupy the highest position among the counsellors of the 
nation. His versatility as exploited in his exquisitely fash- 
ioned thoughts and delicately moulded language was off- 
set by a stability of reasoning and a power of expression 
which made him a potent statesman as well as orator. 

Aristocratic in all the good that the word implies, he 
was a born democrat, and this one characteristic had much 
to do in the career of this distinguished politician, for 
politician 'he was, of the purest, highest type. He was. a 
student of men as well as of events. 

New Haven Leader 

He did not dominate by force, but because of sturdy 
common-sense, sterling honesty, unselfish consecration to 
duty. 



Appendix 627 

He allured by genuine goodness of heart and mind, and 
he subdued by the sweetness of a frank, clear-headed 
prophetic vision which rarely was at fault and never 
eclipsed by selfish purpose. 

New Haven Register 

He began early to see that great as it was to be a dis- 
tinguished beneficiary of partisan support, it was greater 
to be an American citizen in office. It was towards this 
goal that he worked steadily but slowly, for his was not 
the mind to take short cuts to a destination, and he began 
the honorable journey with the determination to become a 
master of the intricacies of Senatorial organization. As the 
years multiplied during which his patience never wearied, 
his good sense increased. He learned the folly of im- 
petuous action, the emptiness of opportune appeals to 
passion, and the ever-present value of sticking to funda- 
mental laws. Simple but direct in speech, his occasional 
remarks on the floor of the Senate commanded attention, 
and his colleagues awoke more and more to the fact that, 
while they did not have in the senior Senator from Con- 
necticut a man of brilliant personal magnetism with whom 
to cross swords, in the clash of rhetorical battle, they had 
a plain, straight-hitting, and effective fighter of conviction 
and courage. What little he had to say rang forth with 
the music of earnestness, the highest form of true eloquence. 

New Haven Journal and Courier 

During the last few years he has been the chief doer of 
things in the Senate, relied on as the friend and counsellor 
of the President, and known the country over as a true 
patriot and a safe guide. 

New London Globe 

Orville H. Piatt was a thoroughly good man. There 
was not a page of his life that could not be read by every 



628 Orville H. Piatt 

eye. He served his God, his country, and every relation 
of the private citizen with unfailing regard for right. 

Brooklyn Eagle 

Large, necessarily large as our appropriations have been, 
they would have been millions more had he not stood like 
a stone wall against iniquitous or doubtful propositions. 
Nor was his work one of prevention alone. He was a con- 
structive statesman of the first rank. He framed or re- 
drafted not a few of the measures to which the names of 
other men were attached on their original introduction 
of them. Every important act of Congress in his time 
was powerfully affected by his suggestion or opposition, 
when his party had the control of affairs. He is best 
known as the author of the Piatt Amendment to the 
measure which recognized the independence of the Cuban 
republic. It was an amendment which forever made 
paramount the rights and the influence of the United 
States over that republic and which that republic itself 
set in its Constitution as a permanency. But the meas- 
ures are thousands for number which he has quite as vitally 
directly or indirectly affected. William McKinley and 
Theodore Roosevelt never had a better, a wiser, or a more 
independent friend. The latter has tenderly and elo- 
quently expressed his obligations to him. . . . 

He looked like Abraham Lincoln, and was unconscious 
of it. He resembled Abraham Lincoln in virtues and in 
wisdom, but did so without any purposed imitation. 
Executive responsibility did not come to him. His was 
all legislative. But if that responsibility had come to him, 
we think he would have shown himself to be a great ad- 
ministrative character and power. We are aware that 
many of our readers will be surprised by the strong esti- 
mate of him here expressed. But that estimate is deserved. 
Every editor knows or should know what an influential, 
patriotic, conscientious, mentally strong and morally fine 



Appendix 629 

public servant and Senatorial leader Orville II. Piatt was. 
Republicanism had in him a tower of strength. Towanl 
Democrats and toward Democracy he was in nothing 
malevolent and in all matters fair and tolerant. His 
friendships dissolved party lines. His confidence in a man 
was itself a tribute to that man's character and capacity. 
He was a partisan, but he always sought to make his party 
better, and in all the things in which it followed him it 
became better, because it followed him. We can not but 
regard his death as a national loss, and we can only hope 
that the reality of his influence will long be felt by his 
party, and the things yet unsecured which he devised for 
his country will be hereafter secured by legislation and by 
administration in the years that are to come. 

New York Evening Post 

Solidity, rather than brilliancy, was always Mr. Piatt's 
chief characteristic. In the Senate he proved a strong 
man, becoming one of the half-dozen controlling spirits. 
In fact, he had for years been a sort of monitor of the 
Senate. Following everything closely, and with a wide 
knowledge of national affairs, it became the habit of the 
newer and less attentive Senators to be governed by his 
course, in matters of routine, voting as they saw him vote, 
accepting his judgment as that of the party, and in the 
large number of things where no partisan lines are drawn, 
as that of the Senate. When questionable policies, es- 
pecially along new and sensational lines, have been pro- 
posed, the common query has been: "What will Piatt of 
Connecticut think of that?" In this respect he fulfilled 
the theory of a Senator which the founders of the republic 
had in mind. 

New York Staats-Zeitung 

Senator O. H. Piatt of Connecticut, over whose grave 
New England now mourns, was a whole man. He was a 



630 Orville H. Piatt 

politician from head to toe, but in every inch a man of 
honor. He was a worthy companion of that other de- 
parted statesman of New England whom Massachusetts 
had honored with the senatorial toga. Seldom, however, 
in our time are men like Hoar and Piatt of Connecticut 
produced. They sit only isolated in the halls of legislation 
— those men whose word is as good as a bond. One must 
look around until they are found for men to whom the man- 
date given to them by the people is worth more than 
self-interest. Even if Piatt was never untrue to the orders 
of his party, which he himself had mistakenly written, 
he was nevertheless always true to the interests of the 
people who had confided to him his high office, which he 
filled in the Senate for so many years with honor and 
dignity. 

New York Tribune 

A veteran in national politics, with a service in the 
Senate extending back for twenty-six years, Mr. Piatt had 
risen to a truly commanding position in public life. He 
was one of the real leaders in the deliberative branch of 
Congress, sharing with perhaps half a dozen colleagues 
the enormous powers which usage and tradition confer 
on the men who shape and execute that body's legislative 
programme. He had been for years a guiding spirit in 
those intimate inner conferences in which the fate of meas- 
ures and policies is decided, and his influence had been 
felt in the solution of every problem of vital consequence 
with which the Senate was called upon to deal. His 
activities were both constructive and critical; for while 
as a member, and subsequently as Chairman, of the Ju- 
diciary Committee his advice was sought on the form and 
spirit of hundreds of measures, he interested himself be- 
sides in initiating and championing far-reaching measures 
of his own, his Amendment to the Army Appropriation 
Bill of March 2, 1901, defining the relations of Cuba to the 



Appendix 631 

United States, giving him an indisputable claim to high 
rank among the constructive statesmen of his generation. 
Mr. Piatt's power as a leader was due not so much to 
brilliancy as to steadiness. He was industrious, patient, 
and clear-sighted, and, though he lacked oratorical gifts, 
he had the faculty of sifting, in whatever he discussed, the 
relevant from the irrelevant, the material from the im- 
material. His mind was practical and his temper serene 
and equable, 

Washington Post 

It is to be regretted that this simple, plain, great char- 
acter was so little known to the people of the country. 
His whole career is a rebuke to the thoughtless and mali- 
cious critics who describe the Senate as a "millionaire's 
club," composed of men working solely for moneyed in- 
terests and in heartless disregard of the rights of the people. 

Senator Piatt was a plain, blunt man. His great gift 
was that of common sense. His leading characteristic 
was an inborn hatred of sham and pretence. He spoke 
rarely, always rising with an odd appearance of bashfulness. 
His speech was marvellously condensed and compact with 
the common sense that amounts to wisdom. His gestures 
were awkward and jerky. His manner was always austere, 
and sometimes, to those who did not know him well, he 
appeared to be impatient and petulant. On occasion he 
employed sarcasm with blighting effect, but never with 
bitterness. His industry in unearthing frauds and his 
ability in stamping them as such in a single sentence were 
remarkable. At times Senator Piatt displayed a peculiar 
thorny wit, that was the delight of his older colleagues, 
who knew the lovable nature of the man under his unbend- 
ing front. 

Absolutely without pretence. Senator Piatt performed 
the tasks that fell to him without a thought of public 
praise or blame. He made himself master of the subject 



632 Orville H. Piatt 

before him, and then gave to his country the conclusions 
of an honest and singularly clear brain. His industry was 
incessant and his independence unquestioned. He was 
a conservative by heredity and training. He clung to 
things that had been tried and proved. No one in the 
Senate was swayed less by popular clamor, whether this 
clamor was right or wrong. His duty as he perceived it 
was to study and deliberate, for the purpose of reaching 
wise conclusions. He performed that duty without the 
slightest regard to public criticism. 

Washington Star 

During his whole career in the Senate he was a power 
for good. Men of both parties had faith in him, sought his 
counsel, and in many things followed it. In this way he 
impressed himself on legislation with which his name was 
not identified, while the legislation which he openly fash- 
ioned was of the best. He was a stout partisan, but not 
a narrow one, and he believed in the United States and its 
destiny implicitly. 

The Troy Times 

The chief factor in making Senator Piatt one of the six 
or eight who formed the leading group in the United States 
Senate was his sagacity. He had New England common- 
sense, and when to this was added fidelity to political, 
moral, and personal principle, together with unflagging 
industry, the result could not fail to be potent in the affairs 
of the Senate. Senator Piatt was not an orator, but in 
these days of business administration of complex interests 
he was more than an orator — he was a man of business 
genius. To reconcile conflicting ideas, to point out wise 
solutions, and to formulate plans and agreements that will 
endure the scrutiny of criticism and the test of operation 
— this is the most useful function of statesmanship, and in 
this capacity Senator Piatt was pre-eminent. 



Appendix 633 

Philadelphia Press 

It often happens through adventitious circumstances 
that a pubHc man's reputation is bigger than ho is. Senator 
Piatt, on the other hand, was bigger than his reputation. 
Modest, unassuming, unaffected, he did not seem, save 
to those who knew the inside, to be playing the great part 
he was actually filling. He was one of the rcriiarkable 
group of four or five men who have been the real dominant 
leaders of the Senate, and who for years have moulded its 
policies and action. The Senate is a body where seniority, 
masterfulness, and personality together make up the in- 
tangible force which gives a man ascendant influence. 
Mr. Piatt's unerring sagacity marked him for leadership 
as clearly as Mr. Aldrich's robust strength and Mr. Allison's 
unfailing equipoise and Mr. Spooner's combined penetration 
and forensic power marked them for the foremost rank. 

He had the unlimited confidence of his associates. They 
reposed implicit trust in his sobriety of judgment and in his 
purity of purpose. He was endowed with saving sense, 
and going back over his long record it can be said that 
he was almost invariably right. He had clear insight and 
a quick sympathy with the true currents of the American 
people. Though missing the high oratorical gift, he had 
a directness, pungency, and virility of speech that made him 
a forcible debater. He was thoroughly unselfish, and no 
man was ever more a true patriot in the best sense of the 
word. It could be said of him, as Wolsey charged Crom- 
well, that all the ends he aimed at were his country's, his 
God's, and truth. He had the high moral quahty of Senator 
Hoar, and he was more practical. 

Peoria Evening Star 

When it came to the practical appHcation of the prin- 
ciples of government that needed legislation, Piatt had 
no superior in the Senate. In committee work, in the 



634 Orville H. Piatt 

conferences that shaped the policy of the nation, Piatt was 
a power. He never strutted, he never made grand-stand 
plays, he never appealed to the prejudices of the multitude; 
he was straight up and down, never frivolous, never tricky, 
never artful, never unreliable. He had the old New Eng- 
land common-sense. He was like a stalwart oak. There 
was no room in his neighborhood for underbrush. There 
was a Ben Franklin wisdom in everything he said or did, 
and because of these qualities the President sought his 
counsel. His brother Senators deferred to his judgment, 
and he remained up to the last moment of his life a man of 
great power in the State. 

Sioux Falls Press 

South Dakota has reason to hold in affectionate regard 
the memory of Mr. Piatt. Without his valuable assistance, 
the contest for statehood in 1889 would have failed, and the 
omnibus bill through which four new stars were added to the 
national galaxy would have been defeated. Senator Vest 
of Missouri, recently deceased, led the opposition, and had 
not Senator Piatt come to the rescue of the Territories 
asking for admission, Mr. Vest would have succeeded. 
South Dakota is entitled to a place among those of this 
great nation who mourn the departure of a statesman 
and a friend. 

Kansas City Journal 

The United States Senate is quick to distinguish between 
a mere emotional orator and a man of solid attainments, 
and Senator Piatt belonged to the latter class by virtue 
of his clear, practical common-sense, fortified by years of 
tireless industry in the study of public matters in all their 
details. An indefatigable worker, with a taste for legis- 
lation, his long years of pubHc service made him a master 
of most public questions ; in fact it was said that he knew 



Appendix 635 

more about matters coming before the various committees 
than most of the members did themselves. 

Topeka Capital 

In some respects he was the strongest man in the United 
States Senate. With Aldrich, and Allison he was the au- 
thority on all fiscal subjects, and on tariff questions was the 
foremost man in either branch of Congress. 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer 

Senator Piatt has never stood much in the lime-light. 
He was never one of the great orators of the country or of 
the Senate. He was never overly conspicuous in debate. 
But he was more. His long years in the public service; 
his ripened wisdom; his magnificent common-sense and 
his complete familiarity with public affairs made him the 
final counsellor, the adviser of last resort upon whose judg- 
ment his colleagues in the Senate, and the Executive as 
well, had learned to rely with absolute confidence. In this 
sense he was a great statesman. 

Atlanta Constitution 

A very great many people beHeve that Orville H. Piatt 
was the ablest of all Northern Senators. Other men have 
been more in the Hme-light of publicity, others have 
figured more often in Senate debate and in political 
harangue, others have been and are much better known 
throughout the country; but it is doubtful if any other Sen- 
ator from the New England States or from any Northern 
State has ranked as high as Senator Piatt. Certainly 
none since death claimed Senator Hoar. 

The product of New England, he stood as the represen- 
tative of not only the ideas but the ideals of that section 
of the country, a section as distinctive as is the West or 



636 Orville H. Piatt 

the South. In him was reflected the rugged conscience, 
the strict integrity, the blunt directness of the Puritan ; 
but with all this there was that consideration for others 
which marks the gentleman whencesoever he may hail, 
a broad humanitarianism, and a tenderness that may have 
seemed to the superficial observer out of place in that 
apparently stem environment. To those who had not 
the opportunity of insight into his real character, Senator 
Piatt seemed all mind and without heart. As a matter of 
fact, however, no man had keener sympathies for his 
fellow men and their best interests. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Lyman, letter on Porto 
Rico, 354; Piatt's reply to 
same, 365 

Abolition influence in Piatt's 
boyhood, 5; his recollection 

of, 7-8 

Adams, George Everett, mter- 
national copyright, 93; dec- 
orated with Legion of 
Honor, 103 

Adams, John Quincy, 84 

Adirondacks, Piatt goes to, 563; 
fondness for, 592 

Agard, Bradley R., 42 

Agricultural Department, 421 

Aguinaldo, 305-6 

Alaska, letter of Piatt to Dillmg- 
ham on, 309-10; bill, 411 

Albany, 550 

Aldrich, Nelson Wilmarth, cur- 
rency reform conference, 
201; conference August, 
1903, 207; member Senate 
Finance Committee, 223; 
in Fifty-sixth Congress, 312; 
visits Cuba, 320; submits 
open session amendment, 
401; confers with Piatt, 
564; tribute to Piatt, 599; 
eulogy on Piatt, 602, 614-5 

Allen, Charles H., Governor of 
Porto Rico, 311 

Allen, William Vincent, open 
session resolution, 396 

Allison, William Boyd, 55, 201, 
207; member Senate Fi- 
nance Committee, 223; in 
Fifty-sixth Congress, 312; 
closure resolution, 409; 
conference with Piatt, 564; 
tribute to Piatt, 600, 603 



American Authors' Copyright 
League, 1 1 1 

American party, Piatt's con- 
nection with, 524 

American Protective Tariff 
League, 374 

American Publishers' Copyright 
League, 1 1 1 

Andrews, Almon, 28 

Anthony, Henry B., 55 

Anti-expansionists of New 
Haven, 288 

Anti-Injunction bill, 425 

Anti-Option bill, 433 

Anti-pooling movement, 455 

A. P. A., McKinley's attitude to, 

503-4 
Appleton, William H., 84-5 
Appleton, W. W., 91, no 
Archaeology, Piatt's interest in, 

593 
ArncU, Samuel M., 85 
Arthur, Chester Alan, Piatt's 

relations with, 496-7 
Aspinwall place, 22 
Atkins, E. F., letter to, 349 
Atlanta Constitution, obituary 

editorial, 635 



B 



Bacon, Augustus Octavius, 320- 
2, 326; Piatt's reply to, 

328-31 
Baldwin, J. G., 85 
Baldwin, ALarcus E., 44-6 
Baldwin, Simeon E., tribute to 

Piatt, 601-2 
Banning, Henry B., 87 
Barker, Wharton, letter from 
Piatt on Canadian recipro- 
city, 393 
Barkhamsted, 553 



637 



638 



Index 



Barnum, P. T., 53 

Barnum, William H., 37 

Bayard, Thomas F., 55 

Beck, James B., international 
copyright; 92; coinage, 178 

Beck amendment, 178 

Berne Convention, effect of, 89, 
90 

Beveridge, Albert J., Alaskan 
question, 310; in Fifty-sixth 
Congress, 312; congratula- 
tory message from, 559; at 
funeral of Piatt, 586; eu- 
logy on Piatt, 603, 613-4 

Birge, John, letter from Piatt to, 
266 

Bissell, Major, 29 

Blaine, James Gillespie, on re- 
ciprocity, 235; pronuncia- 
mento, 236; compaign of 
1884, 497 

Blake, Henry T., letter from 
Piatt to, 538 

Bland, Richard Parks, 180 

Bland-Allison act, 175 

Bliss, Tasker H., work in Cuba, 

379 
Booth, Newton, 55 

Bowen, Henry C, Piatt's reply 

to editorial by, 182 
"Boxers" in Congress, 374 
Brandegee, Frank Bosworth, 

eulogy on Piatt, 603, 61 1-2 
Breckinridge, W. C. P., advocate 

of international copyright, 92 
Bridgeport, Piatt's closure 

speech at, 405 
Bromley, Isaac H., letters from 

Piatt to, on Cuba, 265; on 

Fessenden episode, 551 
Brooke, Major-General John R., 

315 

Brooker, Charles F., letter from 
Piatt to, 519 

Brooklyn Eagle, tribute to Piatt, 
628 

Brooklyn Union League Club, 
Piatt addresses, on expan- 
sion, 300 

Bruce, Blanche K., 55 

Bryan, letter of Piatt concern- 
ing, 424 

Bryant, William Cullen, 84, 85 

Buchanan, James, 84 

Buck, John R., letters from 
Piatt to, on Venezuelan 



affair, 471-2; on McKinley 
cabinet, 505; on re-election 
of Piatt, 538; on St. Louis 
Convention, 544, 546 

Buell, Theodore, 29 

Bulkeley, Governor Morgan G., 
letter from Piatt to, declin- 
ing judicial position, 537; 
at funeral of Piatt, 586; 
eulogy on Piatt, 603, 609-10 

Bull, Miss Annie, marriage to 
O. H. Piatt, 20; death of, 

25 

Burnside, Ambrose E., 55 

Burrows, Julius C, on Senate 

Finance Committee, 253; 

in Fifty-sixth Congress, 312 

Butler, Charles Henry, arranges 

dinner to Piatt, 582-3 
Butler, Matthew Calbraith, 140 
Butterworth, Benjamin, advo- 
cate of international copy- 
right, 92 
Byington, A. H., letters from 
Piatt to, 33, 424 



Canadian reciprocity, letter from 
Piatt on, 393-4 

Candee, Charles T., 30 

Candee, J. B., 29 

Canfield, Lewis A., 5, 23 

Cannon, Joseph G., 409 

Capital, relations with labor, 
419-40; control of, 441 

Carey, Rev. William B., letter 
from Piatt to, 270 

Carlisle, Piatt's estimate of, 119 

Carpenter, Matt. H., 55 

Carter, Thomas H., in Fifty- 
sixth Congress, 312; at 
funeral of Piatt, 586 

Cercle de la Librairie, 103-4 

Chace bill, 91-4 

Chaffee, S. E., letter from Piatt 
to, on Hague treaty, 479 

Chandler, William E., amend- 
ment to war resolutions, 
280; in Fifty-sixth Con- 
gress, 312; recollections of 
Cuban Committee confer- 
ence, 338-9; work on Piatt 
Amendment, 355; letter of 
Piatt to, regarding contri- 
bution of corporations to 



Index 



639 



Chandler— Continued 

campaign fund, 449; trib- 
ute to Piatt, 599 ^ 

Chandler, Zachariah, 55 

Chapin, Charles F., letter from 
Flatt to, 525 

Cherokee Outlet, 117 

Chickasaw Indians, 123 

Chinese Exclusion, 150-63- 
Piatt's speech against, 496 

Chmese legislation proposed. 

Chippewa Indians, 118 

Choate, Rufus, 84 

Choctaw Indians, 123 

Clarendon Treaty, 86 

Clark, Champ, eulogy on Piatt. 
602 

Clark, Charles Hopkins, letters 
of Piatt to, concerning duty 
on books, 256; Cuba, 266; 
Wellman article, 351-2; in- 
terstate commerce legisla- 
tion, 462-4; Piatt as can- 
didate for vice-president, 

Clark, Clarence D., in Fifty- 
sixth Congress, 312 
Clark, Rush, Piatt's eulogy on, 
58-60 

Clark, Walter Eli, 576 

Clay, Henry, International 
Copyright bill, 83-4 

Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 474 

Cleveland, Grover, international 
copyright indorsed by, 88-9 ; 
second election of, 181; 
special session on Sherman 
law, i86; message on tar- 
iff revision, 213; attitude 
toward Cuba, 265; Wilson- 
Gorman bill, 241; nomi- 
nations confirmed in s e- 
cret session, 396; attitude 
toward labor, 423; Venez- 
uelan message, 470; pen- 
sion vetoes, 497 ; Homestead 
• riots, 498; Piatt's attitude 
toward, 499, 500 

Closure, Piatt's amendment, 408 

Cockrell, Francis M., 55, 312, 

^ 518 

Coe, John, letters from Piatt to, 

^ 46, 57- 551 

Coe, Levi E., 40 

Coe, Lyman W., 42 



Cogswell, Mrs., 23 
Collins, Patrick, reports Copy- 
right bill, 91 ' ' 
Colombia, treaty with. 4,.,;; let- 
ter from Piatt on, 478; re- 
lations with Panama, 484- 
treaty with, 563 
Congregational Church, Piatt a 

meml)er of, 591 
Conkling, Roscoc, 55 
Connecticut, gives State recep- 
tion to Piatt, 538: armorial 
bearings of. 559; Piatt's in- 
terest in early history of, 
593; memorial resolutions 
by General Assembly, 619- 
620 
Cook% Charles C, Chairman 
Committee State Reception. 
558; letter from Piatt to. 
^ 561 

Cooke, Governor Lorrin A., let- 
ter from Piatt to, 272 
Corbett appointment, 416 
Corporations, regulation of, 
^ 438 

Courant, Hartford {see Hart- 
ford Courant, also Clark, 
Charles Hopkins) 
Cox, S. S., 86 
Coxey's army, 247 
Crampton, Samuel M., letter 
from Piatt to, regarding 
patronage, 529 
Crane, Winthrop M., at funeral 

of Piatt, 586 
Cuba, reciprocity with, 235, 
369-383; war in. 260- 
283; annexation of, article 
by Piatt in World's Work, 
345-7; Cuban Convention, 
344; Reciprocity bill passes 
House, 382; Piatt's appeal 
for, 382; reciprocity treaty, 

^ 563 

Cuban Committee, 311-323; 
their work on Platt^Amend- 
ment, 336-368 

Cuban scandals, 324 ff. 

Cullom, Shelby M., tribute to 
Piatt, 63; in Fifty-sixth 
Congress, 3 12; work on Piatt 
Amendment, 355 ; eulogy on 
Piatt, 600 

Currency reform, 199 ff. 

Curtis, George William, 102 



640 



Index 



D 



Daignan, Charles, 22 

Dakota, admission of, 140-1 

Danbury, 544 

Daniel, John Warwick, inter- 
national copyright opposed 
by, 92; a.t funeral of Piatt, 

~ 586 

Davis, C. R., in Fifty-sixth 
Congress, 312 

Davis, David, 571 

Dawes, Henry L., 55; chairman 
Committee on Indian Af- 
fairs, 1 1 4-6 

Debs, Eugene, 499 

De Lome letter, 269 

Dewey at Manila, 284 

Diary of one day in Senator 
Piatt's life, 574-6 

Dick, Charles L., asks support 
of Piatt for Hanna, 566; at 
funeral of Piatt, 586 

Dillingham, letter of Piatt to, 3 10 

Dingley, Nelson A., offered 
Treasury portfolio, 504 

Dingley bill, results of, 213; 
framed, 253; revision of, 
384-94 

Dingley tariff, 252 ff. ; comment 
on, 590 

District of Columbia, govern- 
ment of, 298 

Dodd, Frank H., Ill 

Dodd, Samuel, 40 

Dorsheimer, William, Represent- 
ative, 88 

Downs, William E., 29 

Dubois, Fred T., 540-1 

Dunham, S. C, letter from Piatt 
to, 462 

Dwight, Timothy, letter to Piatt 
on currency question, 202; 
Piatt's reply to same, 202-4 



E 



Eaton, William W., 32, 37, 57 
Edmunds George F., letter from 
Piatt to, on Cuba, 267; ad- 
vocate of arbitration treaty, 

477 
Eggleston, work on international 

copyright, 90 
Eight-Hour bill, Piatt opposes, 

425 



Elkins act, 460 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 413, 603 

English, W. E., 88 

Episcopal Church, attended by 

Piatt, 591 
Estes, Dana, letter from Piatt 

to, 105 
Evarts, William M., 14, 87 
Evening Post, New York {see 

New York Evening Post) 
Everett, Edward, 84, 85 
Ewing, Thomas, 84 
Expansion, 284 ff. 



F 



Fairbanks, Charles Warren, in 
Fifty-sixth Congress, 312; 
tribute to Piatt, 601 

Farmers of Connecticut send tel- 
egram on Anti-Option bill, 

435 

Farrell, Franklin, letter to, from 
Piatt, regarding Cuba, 264 

Federation of Labor, 425, 427 

Ferry, Thomas W., 55 

Fessenden, Samuel, letter from 
Piatt to, 196; Piatt writes 
to, regarding senatorship, 
539; manager of Reed can- 
vass, 543; control of Connec- 
ticut vote reported, 546; 
relations with T. C. Piatt 
and Quay, 547; with Reed, 
548; with Orville H. Piatt, 
548, 550 

Fifty-first Congress, work of, 
227-240 

Fifty-sixth Congress, leaders of, 
312 

Finance Committee, 64, 223 

Finance, sound, 165-174 

Fisher, George P., writes to 
Piatt opposing retention of 
Philippines, 289; Piatt's re- 
ply to, 289-90 

Flagg, John H., Piatt's letters to, 
regarding finance, 185, 207, 
209; on Cuba, 273, 276-8; 
on Garden of Eden, 335; 
on Wellman article, 352-3; 
on Finance Committee, 
540; on Fessenden episode, 
545-6; on Meriden address, 
570 



Index 



641 



Foraker, Joseph Benson, in 
Committee on Foreign Re- 
lations, 278; amendment to 
resolution, 280; in Fifty- 
sixth Congress, 312; Chair- 
man Committee on Porto 
Rico and the Pacific Islands, 
359; letter from Piatt to, 
on Porto Rican Tariff, 359 

Foraker amendinent, 331 ; dis- 
cussed by Piatt with For- 
aker, 333-4; results of, 333, 
370 

"Force Bill," 400 

Ford, Dr. William F., 564; letter 
from Piatt to, 568, 581; at- 
tends Piatt in last illness, 585 

Free silver, 175 

Fremont, support of, 31 

French Canadians, Piatt com- 
mends, 148 

French treaty, Kasson's, 257-9 

Frye, William P., amendment 
to International Copyright 
bill, 100; in Fifty-sixth Con- 
gress, 312; president pro 
tern of Senate, 540, 573 



G 



Gallinger, Jacob H., in Fifty- 
sixth Congress, 312; at fun- 
eral of Piatt, 586 

Garfield, James A., Piatt's rela- 
tions with, 495 

Garland, A. H., 55 

Gear, John H., Piatt's eulogy on, 
62 ; in Fifty-sixth Congress, 
312 

Geary bill, 160 

George, James Z., international 
copyright opposed by, 92; 
Piatt's eulogy on, 413 

Gibbons, James, Cardinal, letter 
on A. P. A., 503 

Gila River episode, 126 

Gorman, Arthur Pue, obstructs 
Election bill, 400; Panama 
question, 488; comment on, 

518 
Graham, William F., 40 
Gray, George, Piatt writes to, re- 
garding Cuba, 316; letters 
from Piatt to, 480, 517 
Great Britain, arbitration treaty 
with, 473 



Greeley, General E. S., letter 
from Piatt to, 262 

Green, George W., Scerclary 
Authors' League, 90 

Greenback propaganda, \'j(t 

Greene, Jacol) L., 410 

Grosvenor, Charles II., eulogy 
of Piatt, 602 

Gunn, Frederick W., early life, 
13; Piatt's character sketch 
of, 16, 23; school broken 
up, 19; dispatch from, to 
Piatt, 50; Piatt writes of, 

591 
Gunn, John, leading Abolition- 
ist, 5, 6, 14 



H 



Hadley, Arthur T., tribute to 
Piatt, 456 

Hague treaties, 479 

Hale, Edward Everett, tribute 
to Piatt, 600 

Hale, Eugene, in Fifty-sixth 
Congress, 312 

Hamlin, Hannibal, 55 

Hampton, Wade, 55 

Hanna, Hugh H., organizes 
Indianapolis Convention, 
199 

Hanna, Marcus Alonzo, makes 
tariff 1896 issue, 196; gold 
plank in platform, 198; in 
Fifty-sixth Congress, 312; 
correspondence with Piatt 
regarding Cabinet, 507; 
friendship with Piatt, 508- 
9; possible nomination for 
President, 513; letter from 
Piatt to, urging special ses- 
sion, 564; reply to, 565; 
death of, 569; eulogy of, 

576 
Hansbrough, H. C, 540-1 
Harris, Isham G., refuses to sign 

Silver act, 180 
Harrison, Benjamin, message on 
international copyright, 92; 
Indian policy, 125; Chair- 
man Committee on Terri- 
tories, 145; relations with 
Piatt in Senate, 500; letter 
from, to Piatt, 501 



41 



642 



Index 



Harrison, Lynde, letters of Piatt 
to, on reciprocity, 236; on 
arbitration with Colombia, 
478; Piatt suggests his 
name for diplomatic service, 

534 

Hartford, Piatt speaks at Work- 
ingmen's Club, 431; Con- 
vention of 1903, 554-5; re- 
ception to Piatt at, 559; 
memorial service for Haw- 
ley, 584 

Hartford Courant, 547, 559, 623 
(also see Clark, Charles 
Hopkins) 

Hartford Post editorial, 547-9 

Hartley, M., letter of Piatt to, 
428 

Havana Convention, 337 

Hawaii, speech of Piatt on an- 
nexation of, 285; govern- 
ment, 307; letters from 
Piatt regarding, 308, 470; 
Cleveland's policy toward, 
499; reminiscence of con- 
ference on, 617-8 

Hawley, General Joseph R., can- 
didate for Senate, 38, 42-5, 
47-8; compared with Piatt, 
65; in Fifty-sixth Congress, 
312; possible nominee for 
President, 497; mentioned 
for Secretary of War, 505-8; 
in Connecticut politics, 535; 
on retired list, 576; death 
of, 582; Piatt's eulogy of, 
584; tribute to, 624 

Hay, John, Secretary of State, 
311; on arbitration, 477; 
letter from Piatt to, on 
Hague treaties, 479; Piatt's 
support of, 573 

Hayes, Gordon, Anti-Abolition 
action, 5, 18 

Hayes, Rutherford B., calls 
special session, 54; Chinese 
policy, 153; his Cabinet, 

494 

Henry, E. Stevens, eulogy of 
Piatt, 602 

Hepburn Pure Food bill, 576-7 

Hey wood, Abbott, leader of Lib- 
erals in Utah, 135 

Higgins, Edwin W., eulogy of 
Piatt, 600 

Hill, B. H., 55 



Hill, David B., course regarding 
Sherman act, 185, 249 

Hill, Ebenezer, eulogy of Piatt, 
602, 617 

Hiscock, Frank, 223 

Hoar, George Frisbie, inter- 
national copyright, 92; re- 
ports Election bill, 228; 
anti-imperialism, 294; ques- 
tions Piatt in Senate, 297- 
8; Philippine tariff, 303-7; 
in Fifty-sixth Congress, 31 2; 
amendment to Senate rules, 
400; presses Election bill, 
401; suggested for Presi- 
dent pro tern of Senate, 540; 
Chairman Judiciary Com- 
mittee, 571; tributes to, 
596; compared with Piatt, 

633 
Hollister, Gideon H., Piatt reads 

law with, 20, 22 
Hollister, John C., 30 
Hollister, Mrs. Preston, 23 
Hotchkiss, Phil. Pratt, letter of 

Piatt to, 514 
Hough, Dr., 28 
Howard, Bronson, 106 
Howard, Philip E., letter to, 30 
Hoyt, George A., 26 
Hurley, James, 324, 586 
Hymn, Piatt's favorite, 592 



Idaho, admission of, 143 
Income tax, Piatt speaks on, 449 
Indian, Piatt's work for the, 114- 

133 
Indian Committee, 593 
Indian Rights Association, 125 
Indianapolis Convention, 199 
Ingalls, John J., Piatt's eulogy 

on, 576 
Interior Department overbur- 
dened, 79-80 
International Copyright, 83 ff. ; 
work for, 83-113; its advo- 
cates and opponents, 92 
Interstate Commerce, 455 ff. 
Iron ore, protection of, 249- 

59 
Isthmian Canal (see Panama) 
Iverson, Henry, 86 



Index 



643 



Jay, John, 85 

Jewell, Marshall, political career, 
39; candidate for Senate, 
40; in Garfield^lection, 495 

Johnson, Robert Underwood, 
Secretary Authors' League, 
90; response to toast, 102; 
letter to, 104; letter from, 
no 

Joint Campaign Committee on 
international copyright, 90 

Jones, James K., 116 

Jones, John P., 55; member Sen- 
ate Finance Committee, 
223,253 

Judea, Conn., history of, 4 ff. 

Judiciary Committee of Senate, 
64; chairmanship of, 572 

Judson, Antoinette, 23 



K 



Kansas City Journal, 634 
Kasson treaty with France, 257 
Kean, John, at funeral of Piatt, 

586; eulogy on Piatt, 603 
Kellam, A. H., letters of Piatt 

to, regarding Tariff bill, 232; 

on Blaine pronunciamento, 

236 
Kellogg, William Pitt, 55 
Kelly, Abby, 5, 6 
Kenealy, Michael, letter of Piatt 

to, 526 
Kennedy, John L., represents 

Typographical Union, 92 
de Keratry, Count E., 102; 

bearer of gold medal from 

French societies, 103 
Kickapoo Indian, letter from, 

130-1 
Kingsbury, F. J., letter from 

Piatt to, 129 
Kirby, Conn., 26, 584 
Kirkwood, Samuel J., 55 
Knights Templars, 34 
Know-Nothing party, 147 



Lamar, L. Q. C, 55 

Lathrop, George P., Secretary 

Authors' League, 90 
Lavigne, Germond, 104 



Lawlcr, Miss, 574 

Leader, New Ilavcn {see New 
Haven Leader) 

Legion of Honor, decoration 
offered Piatt, 103 

Lewes, LC, contributes to Piatt 
canvass, 553 

Liliuokalani, restoration of, 499 

Lilley, George L., eulogy of 
Piatt, 603 

Lincoln, Abraham, Piatt com- 
pared to, 588, 628 

Lines, H. Wales, Chairman 
Campaign Committee, 40; 
letters of Piatt to, 41 ; con- 
cerning Cuba, 263; possible 
war, 271; other letters, 543; 
finances campaign of 1879, 
552; State reception, 558 

Litchfield, historic importance 
of, 3 

Littlefield, Charles E., 447 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, interna- 
tional copyright, 102; 
amendment to Wilson- 
Gorman Tariff bill, 186; dis- 
cussion 1896 platform, 197: 
Election bill, 228; Chairman 
Committee on Philippines, 
311; in Fifty-sixth Con- 
gress, 312; eulogy of Piatt, 
602-3 

Logan, John A., 55 

Loomis, Francis B., 575 

M 

McClellan, Piatt's comment on, 

517 

McDonald, J. E., 55 

McDonald, J. H., letter from 
Piatt to, 525 

McKinley, William, advocate 
of international copyright, 
92; Piatt writes to, 122; 
views on currency question, 
196; results of election of, 
199; apostle of protection, 
222; Tariff bill, 228; Demo- 
cratic abuse of same, 238; 
nominated for President, 
253; special message on re- 
concentration, 268; mes- 
sage on Cuba, 278; Piatt's 
letter to, favoring cession of 
Philippines, 287-8; framing 



644 



Index 



McKinley — Continued 

of Cuban Constitution, 
337; abolition of Porto 
Rican tariff, 358; Piatt con- 
fers with, on same, 361; 
Tariff bill obstructed by 
Gorman, 400; attitude on 
silver, 502; framing^ Cab- 
inet, 504; assassination of, 
Piatt's comment on, 510; 
movement to offer Piatt 
vice-presidency on ticket, 

548 
McLean, Governor George P., 

569 
IMcMillan, James, 312 
MacNeil, H. A., designer of Piatt 

medallion, 622 
Maine, the, 269 
Manderson, Charles F., 540 
Meriden, Conn., address to 

church at, 570; attendance 

from, at funeral of Piatt, 

586; Piatt a member of 

church in, 591 
Meriden Record, 626 
Merritt, C. H., letter from Piatt 

to, 544 
Metcalf, V. H., letter of Piatt to, 

426 
Mills, Roger Q., 222 
Miner, William C, letter of Piatt 

to, 230 
Mitchell, Elnathan, 11 
Monetary Commission, 199-200 
Money, Hernando de Soto, in 

Fifty-sixth Congress, 312; 

aid in Piatt Amendment, 

Morgan, John T., 55; served 
with Piatt on Indian Com- 
mittee, 132-3; Piatt's reply 
to, in Fifty-sixth Congress, 
312; compels special ses- 
sion, 409; eulogy of Piatt, 
602, 615 

Mormons, 135 

Morrill, Justin S., 55; reports 
McKinley Tariff bill, 228 

Morrill bill, 178 

Morrison, W. R., "Horizontal" 
bill, 213 

Morrow, James B., recalls last 
interview with Piatt, 578 

Mowbray, H. Siddons, 622 

Murphy, Governor, 574 



N 



National Museum, Piatt secures 
appropriation for, 594 

National Park, 623 

Neeley defalcation, 320, 328 

Nelson, Knute, in Fifty-sixth 
Congress, 312; eulogy on 
Piatt, 603, 615 

Nettleton, Daniel, 11 

New England, Piatt defends 
manufacturers of, 215-7 

New Haven Journal and Cour- 
ier, 627 

New Haven Leader, 549, 560, 
626 

New Haven Register, 627 

New London Globe, 627 

New York Evening Post, 629 

New York Staats-Zeitung, 629 

New York Tribune {see Brom- 
ley, Isaac H.) 

North, S. N. D., first meeting 
with Piatt for discussion of 
woollen schedule, 242 



O 



Obstruction, factor of Senate de- 
bates, 409 

Oklahoma, admission of, 144; 
Piatt National Park in, 623 

Olney, Richard, opposes action 
on Cuban question, 265; 
despatch to Salisbury, 472; 
comment on, 518 

Osborn, A. D., letter from Piatt 
to, concerning Cuba, 263; 
on Panama, 484-5 

Outlook, the, article on "Stand- 
ing Rock Reservation," 126; 
letter from Piatt to, on 
Venezuelan situation, 474 



Paige, A. W., 558 
Panama, revolution in, 564 
Panama Canal, Piatt favors, 

483 ff. 
Parker, Alton B., compared by 

Piatt to McClellan, 517 
Parker, Charles, 553 
Parker, Rev. E. P., letter from 

Piatt to, on Cuba, 263 



Index 



645 



Pasco, Samuel, opposes Inter- 
national Copyright bill, 102 

Patronage, Piatt's ideas on, 528 

Patterson bill, 162 

Payne, Henry C, friendship 
with Piatt, 568 

Payne, Sereno E., Porto Rican 
Tariff bill, 358; eulogy of 
Piatt, 602 

Peffer, William A., moves to put 
iron on free list, 249 

Pegram, A. Bertram, sculptor of 
memorial to Piatt, 622 

Pendleton, George H., 55 

Pension Order 78, 567 

Peoria Evening Star, 633-4 

Perkins, George Clement, eulogy 
of Piatt, 603, 616 

Pettus, Edmund W., in Fifty- 
sixth Congress, 312; at 
funeral of Piatt, 586 

Philadelphia Press, 633 

Philippines, 284 ff.; opening of 
religious opportunity in, 
284; letter to George P. 
Fisher, arguing retention of, 
289-94 

Pickett, Charles W., letter of 
Piatt to, regarding senator- 
ship, 549 

Pierrepont, Edwards, 14 

Pima Indians, 127 

Piatt, Almyra Hitchcock, mother 
of Senator Piatt, 9, 10 

Piatt, Daniel, father of Orville 
H., I, 9 

Piatt family, genealogy of, 2, 3 

Piatt, James, letter from O. H. 
Piatt to, regarding Hart- 
ford Post editorial, 547; 
Fessenden episode, 549; 
appointed to Federal bench, 

595 
Piatt, John, grandfather of O. H. 

Piatt, 2 

Piatt, Mrs. Jeannie, marriage, 
26; letters to, 324-5, 564; 
declines State funeral after 
Senator Piatt's death, 585 

Piatt, Orville H., birth and an- 
cestry, 1-2; early home, 
3-4; Abolition influences in 
boyhood, 5 ff.; mother of, 
9-10; recollections of boy- 
hood, 11-12, 21-24; in- 
fluence of Frederick W. 



Gunn upon, 13-20; marries 
Miss Annie Bull, 20; 
teaches at Litchfield, 20; 
residence in Towanda, 21; 
return to Meridcn, 21; 
love of nature, 23 IT.; death 
of Mrs. Piatt, 25; marries 
Miss Jeannie P. Smith, 26; 
home at Kirby Corner, 26; 
residence in Meridcn, 27 ff.; 
Judge of Probate, 29; State 
Senator, 32; religious life, 
33; letter to A. H. Bying- 
ton, 33; membership IVleri- 
den Lodge and St. Elmo 
Commandery K. T., 34; 
political work in Connecti- 
cut, 36-7; midnight caucus, 
38 ff.; letter to H. Wales 
Lines, 41; newspaper com- 
ment on election to the 
Senate, 47 ff.; dispatch from 
Gunn, 50; reception fol- 
lowing election, 49 ff. ; goes 
to Hartford, 52-3; goes to 
Washington, 54; contem- 
poraries in first term as 
Senator, 55; first appoint- 
ments on committees, 56; 
first utterances in Senate, 
57-8; delivers eulogy on 
Rush Clark, 58-60; traits 
as Senator, 61 ff.; eulogy on 
Senator Gear, 62; Cullom's 
tribute to, 63-4; compared 
with Hawley, 65; physical 
appearance as Senator, 66- 
7; his ideal of the Senator- 
ship, 68-9; "age does not 
amount to much," 69; 
Chairman of the Patents 
Committee, 70 ff.; address 
on patent system, 71; speech 
in defence of same, 75 ff.; 
work in framing acts relat- 
ing to patents, 82; inter- 
national copyright, 83 ff.; 
co-workers with, for Inter- 
national Copyright law, 92; 
introduces bill, 93; assumes 
active management of cam- 
paign, 94; explains nature 
of bill, 96; holds Senate to its 
consideration, 97; copyright 
not a monopoly, 98; amend- 
ments offered by Frye 



646 



Index 



Piatt, Orville H. — Continued 

and Sherman, loo-i; bill 
passed, loi; appointed one 
of conferees for Senate, loi; 
letter to, from Cercle de la 
Librairie and Syndicat de la 
Propriety Litt^raire et Ar- 
tistique, 103-4; letter from, 
to Robert Underwood John- 
son, 104; guest of honor at 
banquet in New York, 102; 
letter from, to Dana Estes, 
105-6; effect of copyright 
law, 106; subsequent work 
along this line, 106 ff.; letter 
from Bronson Howard to, 
107; work for American 
dramatists, 106-7; bill to 
remedy discrimination 
against Continental writers, 
107; letter from George 
Haven Putnam regarding 
same, 108-9; resolutions of 
sympathy on death of Sena- 
tor Piatt, by American Pub- 
lishers' Copyright League, 
109-10; tribute to, from 
Robert Underwood John- 
son, secretary of same, no; 
tribute to, by George Haven 
Putnam, 11 1-3; protector 
of the Indian, 114 ff.; mem- 
ber of Committee on Indian 
Affairs, 114; Chairman of 
this Committee, 116; letter 
to, from Henry L. Dawes, 
1 16-7; opening of Cherokee 
Outlet, 117; bill for Chippe- 
was of Minnesota, 118; 
opinion of Carlisle, 119; 
opinion of treaties with 
civilized tribes, 119; de- 
nounces abuses in Indian 
Territory, 120; self-govern- 
ment in Territory a failure, 
121; President McKinley 
asks aid of, 122; letter from, 
to McKinley, on Indian 
problem, 122-4; letter to 
Herbert Welsh, on appoint- 
ments by Hoke Smith, 125; 
letter to Lyman Abbott, 
126; Pima reservation epi- 
sode, . 127; letter regard- 
ing, 127-8; letter regarding 
Rosebud reservation, 128- 



9; letter to F. J. Kingsbury, 
129; letter to, from Mak 
She Ka Tan No, Kickapoo 
Indian, 130-1; interview of 
Indians with, 131-2; trib- 
ute of Senator Morgan to 
work for Indians, 132-3; 
work for the West, 134 ff.; 
service with Committee on 
Territories, 134; tribute to 
New England, 134-5; un- 
derstanding of Western 
character, 135; action on 
Mormon question, 135-6; 
conviction regarding admis- 
sion of new States, 136 
-7; advocates admission of 
Washington, 137; defence 
of New England, 138-9; 
sympathy with the people of 
Dakota in resisting change 
of name, 140; reply to Sen- 
ator Butler regarding same, 
140; advocates admission of 
Dakota against Democratic 
opposition, 141; advocates 
division of Dakota, 142; 
secures admission of Idaho 
and Wyoming, 143; admis- 
sion of Utah and Oklahoma, 
143, 144; letter to L. F. 
Parker on admission of 
Oklahoma, 144; letter re- 
garding patronage in Terri- 
tories, 145; Chairmanship of 
Committee on Territories, 
146; attitude toward thefor- 
eign-born American, 147 ff.; 
affiliation with Know-Noth- 
ing party, 147; commends 
French Canadians, 148; ad- 
vocates prohibition of con- 
tract labor, 149-50; reasons 
for opposing Chinese bill, 
150; supports educational 
test for citizenship, 150; 
speech on Chinese Exclu- 
sion, 1 5 1-2; relations with 
China discussed, 153 ff.; 
speechon treaty with China, 
154-6; speech against Chi- 
nese Exclusion bill of Sept. 
3, 1888, 157-60; opposes 
Exclusion bill of 1904, 162- 
3; letter of approval to, 
from former Secretary of 



Index 



647 



Piatt, Orville, H.—Contijiued 
State, 163; work for sound 
finance, 164 ff.; letter con- 
cerning same, to John 
H. Flagg, 165; speech on 
Funding bill, 168-71; bank 
circulation, 173; opposi- 
tion to free silver, 175 ff.; 
antagonist of Greenback 
propaganda, 176; opposes 
Stewart amendment, 177-8; 
debate with Senator Stew- 
art, 179-80; letter to Henry 
C.Bowenon Silver law, 182- 
5; letter to John H. Flagg 
on repeal of Sherman law, 
185-6; speaks in favor of 
Lodge amendment, 187-8; 
opposes fictitious seignior- 
age, 189 ff. ; opposes paper 
currency, 193-5; letter to 
Samuel Fessenden, on coin- 
age question, 196-7; cur- 
rency reform, 199 ff.; letter 
on monetary commission, 
200; member Finance Com- 
mittee in 1897, 200, 201; 
letter to, from Timothy 
Dwight, on gold stand- 
ard, 202; Piatt's reply to 
same, 202-4; letter on main- 
taining gold standard, 204- 
6; letter to John H. Flagg 
on conference of Fi- 
nance Committee, 207-9; 
Warwick conference, 209; 
letter to John H. Flagg 
on Congressional situation, 
209-11; staunch advocate 
of protection, 212 ff.; com- 
ment on Cleveland's mes- 
sage, 213-4; effect of pro- 
tection on New England 
discussed by, 215-6; free 
raw materials, argument on, 
217-8; discusses surplus, 
218-9; national debt, 219- 
20; advocates repeal of in- 
ternal revenue tax, 220-1; 
discusses markets of the 
world, 221-2; speech on 
development of labor and 
industry, 223-5; discusses 
duty on tin plate, 225; re- 
lation of tariff to trusts, 
speech on, 225-6; part in 



Fifty-first Congress, 227 fT.; 
brevity of speeches by, 22H; 
letter regarding McKiuky 
bill, 229-30; Idler on Lodge 
Election iiill, 230; letter lo 
William C. Miner, 230-1; 
letter to A. H. Kellani f)n' 
Senate rules, 232-4; views 
on reciprocity, 235; letter 
to A. H. Kellam on same, 
235; letter to Lynde Har- 
rison on same, 236; refuses 
to be swayed by popular 
clamor, 239; letter oppos- 
ing free lumber and free 
coal, 240; Wilson-Gorman 
bill, 241 ff. ; recollection of 
conversation with Piatt on 
woollen schedule, by S. N. 

D. North, 242; comment 
on part taken by Piatt 
in debate, 243; advocates 
duty 60 cents on coal, 243- 
4; comment on difference 
between two bills, 244-5; 
on incidental protection, 
246; Coxey's army due to 
threat of bill, 247; problem 
of the unemployed, 247; 
wool schedule, 248; defence 
of farmer, 248-9; attitude 
of New England on protec- 
tion, 249-50; Dingley tariff, 
252 ff.; work on Finance 
Committee with Aldrich 
and Allison, 253; methods 
in replying to manufac- 
turers, 253-4; co-operation 
with Representative Russell 
of Connecticut, 253; letter 
to New Milford manufac- 
turer, 253-4; makes no 
speeches during debate, 255 ; 
answer to query "Does the 
foreigner pay the tax? " 255; 
letter to Charles Hopkins 
Clark, 256; sustains admin- 
istration i7t re Kasson treat- 
ies, 257; letter regarding 
same, 257-9; Cuban situa- 
tion, 260 ff.; position un- 
popular in Connecticut, 261 ; 
counselsdeliberation, 261-3 ; 
submits resolution March 
23,1896,262; letter to Gen. 

E. S. Greeley, 262; letter 



648 



Index 



Piatt, Orville U.— Continued 
to A. D. Osborne, 263; let- 
ter to Rev. E. P. Parker, 
263; letter to H. Wales 
Lines, 263-4; letter to 
Franklin Farrell, 264; op- 
poses intervention, 264; let- 
ter to Isaac H. Bromley, 
265-6; letter to Charles 
Hopkins Clark, 266; letter 
to Hon. John Birge, 266; 
letter to ex-Senator George 
F. Edmunds, 267-8; sym- 
pathy with McKinley, 269; 
letter to Rev. William B. 
Carey, 270; counsels calm 
judgment, 270; letter to H. 
Wales Lines, 271-2; letter 
to Governor Cooke, 272; 
efforts to prevent Congress 
overriding the President, 
2,72; letter to John H. 
Flagg, 273-4; interview 
given to the press, 174-5; 
letters to John H. Flagg 
almost a diary, 276 ff. ; close 
to McKinley, 276; letters 
to John H. Flagg, 276, 277, 
278; attitude of Foreign 
Relations Committee, 277, 
279-80; speech by Piatt 
opposing Foraker amend- 
ment, 280-1 ; dictates state- 
ment of position, 281-3; 
attitude toward expansion, 
284 ff.; opening of Philip- 
pines appeals to Piatt as 
religious opportunity, 284; 
speech on annexation of 
Hawaii, 285-6; to abandon 
Philippines a colossal error, 
286; letter to McKinley re- 
garding this, 287-8; rela- 
tions with Yale faculty, 288: 
with Yale anti-expansion- 
ists, 288 ff.; letter to Pro- 
fessor Fisher, 289-94; 
obliged to take issue with 
Hoar, 295; opposes Vest 
resolution, 296-300; re- 
sponse to Allen of Nebraska, 
297; questioned by Hoar, 
297-8; reply to, 298-300; 
addresses Brooklyn Union 
League Club on expansion, 
300-2; Philippine problem, 



303 ff. ; replies to Teller's 
criticism of administration 
policy in the Philippines, 
303-7; questioned by Hoar, 
304; reply to, 304-5; re- 
lations with Hoar there- 
after, 307; attitude toward 
Hawaii, 307-9; letter to 
Senator Dillingham on 
Alaskan question, 310; gov- 
ernment of Cuba, 311 ff.; 
co-workers in Congress, 312; 
Chairman of Committee 
on Relations with Cuba, 
312-3, 315; opposes annex- 
ation of Cuba, 314; letter 
to E. F. Atkins on same, 
314-5; letter to Judge 
George Gray on same, 316- 
9; arranges for sub-com- 
mittee to visit Cuba, 319- 
20; visits Cuba, 320; Neeley 
and Reeves defalcation, 
320 ff. ; takes up ques- 
tion of allowances, 322-3; 
Cuban scandals, 324 ff.; de- 
sire for home, 324-6; let- 
ters to Mrs. Piatt, 325-8; 
prepares defence of admin- 
istration, 326-8; delivers 
speech, 328-32; reply to 
Senator Bacon, 329-31; 
letter to General Wood, 
332-4; discusses modifica- 
tion of Foraker amendment 
with Foraker, 334; letter 
from Judea to John H. 
Flagg, 335; Piatt Amend- 
ment, 336 ff.; work done 
in Cuba summarized, 336; 
action regarding Cuban 
Convention, 3377-8; confer- 
ence of Republican mem- 
bers of committee on same, 
338-40; Chandler's recol- 
lections of conference, 339- 
40; co-operation of Demo- 
cratic members, 341; sub- 
mits amendment to Army 
Appropriation bill, 34i~3; 
amendment adopted, 343-4; 
Root consults Piatt regard- 
ing Cuban independence, 
344; reply to, 344-5; article 
in World's Work on Cuban 
annexation, 345-7; letter 



Index 



Piatt, Orville U.— Continued 
to member of Convention, 
346-8; letter to E. F. At- 
kms, 348-9; article by Well- 
man stating Root to be 
author of Piatt Amend- 
ment, 349-50; comment of 
Hartford Courant on same, 
350; letter to Charles Hop- 
kins Clark on same, 351-2; 
indifference to Wellman 
statement, 352; letter to 
Charles Hopkins Clark on 
same, 352 ; query from John 
H. Flagg regarding same, 
362; reply to Flagg letter, 
353; memoranda of Piatt 
Amendment, 353-4; drafts 
of suggestions by Chandler 
and Cullom, 355; Porto 
Rican tariff, 357 ff.; Piatt 
confronts new problems, 
357; letter to Foraker, 359- 
61; protection of American 
labor, 360; calls on Mc- 
Kinley, 361; letter on 
trade with Porto Rico, 362; 
amendment proposed Janu- 
ary 24, 1900, 363; duty on 
imports, _ 363; amendment 
to Hawaiian bill, 363; visits 
Cuba on tour of investi- 
gation, 364; letter from 
Lyman Abbott to, 364; re- 
plies to, declining to write 
article for Outlook, 365-8; 
defines position of anti- 
imperialist, 366; defines 
position of free-trader, 366- 
8; reciprocity with Cuba, 
369 ff. ; writes to General 
Wood and to Secretary 
Root on same, 370; letter to 
Wood quoted, 371; article 
in North American Review, 
371-3; trade relations with 
Cuba should be defined, 
372; letter to sugar-planter, 
373; discusses beet -sugar 
in North American Review, 
article already quoted, 374- 
6 ; statement to the press on 
Cuban reciprocity, 376-7; 
reply to Senator Teller, 
377-8; Piatt Amendment 
carried out, 379; tobacco 



649 

interests of Connecticut be- 
siege Plait. 3H0; reply to 
New Haven cigar-makers" 
union, 380-1 ; Icllcr to Now 
Haven editor, 381 ; reply to 
American Protective TarifT 
League, 381-2; bulwark of 
the administration in sup- 
port of reciprocity, 382; 
appeal to the American 
people, 382-3; cmposes 
tariff revision, 384 ff. ; de- 
fines protection, 384; calls 
on Roosevelt, 385; letter to 
member of Finance Com- 
mittee regarding same, 385- 
6; opposes joint commis- 
sion to consider tariff revis- 
ion, 386; letter to Roosevelt, 
387-91; tariff revision un- 
necessary, 387; undesirable 
effect on the country, 390; 
spectacular revision disas- 
trous, 391; duty has no 
effect on prices, 392; duty 
on wood pulp, 392; dump- 
ing question, 392-3; reci- 
procity with Canada, 393-4: 
letter to Wharton Barker on 
same, 393-4; rules of the 
Senate, 395 ff.; conservative 
yet flexible mind, 395; sub- 
mitsopcn session resolution, 
396; speech on same, 397- 
9; secret session relic of 
monarchical privilege, 397; 
secrecy a farce, 399; debate 
on closure, 401; objects to 
obstructive tactics on the 
part of Teller, 402; presents 
amendment providing for 
closure, 403; address in sup- 
port of same, 403; com- 
pares Senate to House of 
Lords, 403; absurdity of 
present methods, 404-5; 
speech at Bridgeport Cen- 
tennial banquet, 405-7; 
amendment offered to the 
rules, 408; gathers materia! 
to press amendment, 410; 
letter to Jacob L. Greene on 
same, 410; dignity of the 
Senate, 411 ff.; opposes 
Alaskan delegate, 411; ob- 
jects to unanimous consent 



650 



Index 



Piatt, Orville U.— Continued 

rule, 41 1-2; ideal of the 
Senatorship, 413-4; letter 
to John H. Flagg on Till- 
man- McLaurin episode, 
415; vote on Corbett ap- 
pointment, 416; speech on 
Quay appointment, 416-8; 
views on labor and capital, 
419 ff.; income limited, 419- 
20; equal rights not neces- 
sarily equal possessions, 42 1 ; 
attitude on Department of 
Agriculture, 421; reply to 
Morgan of Alabama, 422; 
tribute to the workingman, 
422-3; Cleveland sowing 
the wind, 423; study of 
Bryan, 424-5; letter to A. 
H. Byington, 424-5; ob- 
stacle in the way of Anti- 
Injunction bill, 425; op- 
poses Eight-Hour law, 425; 
relations with Federation of 
Labor, 425; letter to Sec- 
retary Metcalf, 426; letter 
to Waterbury Typographi- 
cal Union, 427; letter to 
Central Labor Union of 
Waterbury, 427; letter to 
Hartford manufacturer, 
427-8; letter to M. Hart- 
ley, 428; domment on 
Standard Oil, 428; on In- 
come Tax, 428-9; com- 
mends Roosevelt's action on 
coal strike and Northern 
Securities case, 429-30; ad- 
dresses Workingmen's Club 
at Hartford, 431-3; opposes 
Anti-Option bill, 433-5; 
replies to Connecticut farm- 
ers, 435-6; discusses farm- 
ers' problems, 436-7; regu- 
lation of corporations, 438 
fl.; opposes indiscriminate 
assaults on trusts, 438; op- 
poses monopoly, 439; con- 
solidation of capital inevit- 
able, 440-1; necessity of 
control and regulation, 441 ; 
Sherman Anti-Trust bill, 
442; debate on, 443-5; let- 
ter to Roosevelt on same, 
445-6; favors Bureau of 
Corporations, 446-7; dis- 



sents from report of Judici- 
ary Committee on Little- 
field Anti-Trust bill, 447; 
regulation of beef and to- 
bacco trusts, 448; letter to 
William E, Chandler on 
contribution of corporations 
to campaign fund, 448-9; 
objection to income tax pro- 
vision defined, 449-54; op- 
poses corporation income 
tax per se, 453-4; Inter- 
state Commerce law, 455 
ff.; vitally important part 
of Piatt in its preparation, 
455; anti-pooling clause 
opposed, 455-6; President 
Hadley's tribute to sagacity 
of, in this connection, 456; 
tribute of Senator Spooner 
to same, 456-7; speech on 
Interstate Commerce bill, 
457-60; supports Elkins 
Act of 1903, 460; comment 
on Roosevelt's attitude 
toward the railroads, 461; 
predicts overshadowing of 
tariff revision by railroad 
rates, 461; letter to S. C. 
Dunham, 462; letter to 
Charles Hopkins Clark, 
462-5; letter to railway 
president, 465-6; our rela- 
tions to other Powers, 467 
ff. ; a robust American, 467; 
comment on the battle of 
Manila, 467; speech at New 
Haven Bar Association din- 
ner on foreign alliances, 
4'68; Hawaiian situation, 
470; letter to M. M. Gower 
on same, 470; supports 
Cleveland on Venezuelan 
question, 471-2; supports 
ratification of arbitration 
treaty with Great Britain, 
473; defends motives of 
Senate on same, 473-4; re- 
ply to editor of Outlook, 
474-7; discusses Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty, 474-5; letter 
to Prof. Waldo G. Piatt, 
477; letter to Lynde Har- 
rison on arbitration, 478; 
letter to Secretary Hay on 
same, 479-80; letter to 



Index 



6u 



Piatt, Orville K.— Continued 

Judge Gray, 481; letter to 
S. E. Chaflfee, 481; Panama 
Canal discussion, 483 IT.; 
building of canal dear to 
Piatt's heart, 483; supports 
Roosevelt in action, 484; 
letter to W. F. Osborne on 
same, 484-5; Rev. Dr. 
Newman Smyth writes to 
Piatt opposing President, 
486; reply to, 486; com- 
ment on New Haven peti- 
tion, 487-8; speech support- 
ing administration, 488-93; 
relations with the President, 
494 ff. ; with Hayes, 494; 
with Garfield, 495; media- 
tion for Jewell, 495; sup- 
port of Arthur as President, 
496; supports Hawley for 
nomination, 497; opposi- 
tion to Cleveland's pension 
vetoes, 497-8; supports 
Cleveland in action during 
Debs riots, 499-500; friend- 
ship with Harrison, 500-1 ; 
relations with McKinley 
and Hanna, 502 ff . ; letter on 
nomination of McKinley, 
502-3; letter to McKinley, 
504; letter to John R. Buck 
suggesting Hawley for Cab- 
inet, 505; second letter on 
same, 505-6; correspond- 
ence with Hanna on same, 
507-8; friendship with 
Hanna, 509; tribute to Mc- 
Kinley, 509-10; relations 
with Roosevelt, 511 ff.; 
called to confer with Roose- 
velt, 511; Roosevelt's trib- 
ute to, 51 1-2; characteriza- 
tion of Roosevelt by, 512; 
support of Roosevelt in Sen- 
ate, 513; favors nomination 
of Roosevelt, 513-9; letter 
to Philo Pratt Hotchkiss on 
same, 514; letter defending 
Hanna, 515; letter regard- 
ing corporate opposition to 
Roosevelt, 515-7; Roose- 
velt conservative, 517-8; 
letter to Charles F. Brooker 
urging Roosevelt delegation, 
519; speech at State Con- 



vention at Hartford for 
Roosevelt, 520; culoi'y of 
Roosevelt, 520-1; poliUia! 
methods and attitude tow- 
ard patronage matters, 524 
ff.; in work of parly or- 
ganization, 524; letter to 
Charles F. Chapin. 525; let- 
ter to J. H. McDonald, 525: 
letter to Michael Kcnealy, 
526-7; letter to G. Wells 
Root, 528; letter to E. F. 
Strong, 528; letter to 
Samuel H. Crampton, 529- 
30; letter to Leslie M. Shaw 
objecting to T. C. Piatt's 
control of New York ap- 
pointments of Connecticut 
men, 532-3; letter to 
Roosevelt suggesting ap- 
pointment of Lynde Harri- 
son for diplomatic service, 
534; position in Connecti- 
cut politics, 535 ff.; never 
asked for State appoint- 
ment after entering Senate, 
535; meditates resignation, 
536; offered office of Chief 
Justice of Supreme Court 
of errors of Connecticut, 
537; refused to consider 
nomination for President or 
Vice-President, 537; letter 
to Governor Bulkcley, 537; 
letter to John R. Buck, 538; 
letter to Henry T. Blake, 
538-9; letter to Samuel 
Fessenden, 539; letter to 
John H. Flagg, 540-1; the 
Fessenden episode, 542 ff.; 
suggested for Vice-Presi- 
dency with McKinley, 542; 
letter to H. Wales Lines, 
543-4; letter to John R. 
Buck, 544; letter to C. H. 
Mcrritt, 544-5; letter to 
John H. Flagg, 545-6; let- 
ter to John R. Buck, 546-7; 
letter to James Piatt, 547; 
letter to Charles Hopkins 
Clark, 548; letter to H. 
Wales Lines, 548-9; letter 
to Charles W. Pickett, 549- 
50; letter in reply to accu- 
sation of nepotism, 550-1; 
letter to Isaac H. Bromley, 



652 



Index 



Piatt, Orville H. — Continued 

551-2; statement of elec- 
tion expenses of 1897, 552- 
3; State tribute to Senator 
Piatt, 554 ff.; speech before 
General Assembly, 555-8; 
letter to H. Wales Lines re- 
garding State reception, 
558; preparation for recep- 
tion, 558-9: telegram from 
Senator Beveridge, 559; ed- 
itorial from Hartford Cour- 
ow'> 559~6o; editorial of 
New Haven Leader, 560-1; 
letter to Charles C. Cook, 
561-2; last years, 563 ff. ; 
goes to Adirondacks, 563-4; 
letter to Hanna on extra 
session, 564-5; letter to 
Hanna on Ohio campaign, 
566; support of Roose- 
velt, 567; supports ac- 
tion on Pension Order 78, 
567; postal investigation, 
568; letter to Dr. Ford, 
568; grief at Hanna's death, 
569; letter to Sperry, 570; 
letter regarding speech at 
Meriden, 570; last session, 
571 ff.; yields membership 
of Judiciary Committee to 
Hoar in 1883, 571; becomes 
chairman, 571-2; presides 
over Swayne impeachment 
court, 573-4; diary of one 
day in Senator Piatt's life, 
574-6; variety of questions 
arousing his interest, 576- 
7; opposes Pure Food bill, 
577; last interview recalled 
by James B. Morrow, 578- 
9; last illness and death, 
581 ff.; letter to Dr. Ford, 
581-2; dinner to Piatt 
planned by Charles Henry 
Butler, 582; letter of Roose- 
velt regarding dinner, 582- 
3; letter to Butler com- 
menting on same, 583; 
death of General Hawley, 
584; eulogy of Hawley, 584; 
death, 585; Mrs. Piatt de- 
clines State funeral, 585; 
funeral simplicity, 586; epi- 
taph, 587; estimate of 
character and personal 



traits, 588 ff. ; personal ap- 
pearance, 588; compared 
with Lincoln, 588; consid- 
eration for others, 589-90; 
eulogy of Charles A. Rus- 
sell, 590; religious feeling, 
591-2; love of nature, 592; 
fondness for archaeology 
and early history of Con- 
necticut, 593; indifference 
to money, 594; aloofness 
from local politics, 595; 
tribute to Senator Piatt 
from Roosevelt in appoint- 
ing James Piatt, 595; in- 
tegrity and sagacity, 596-7; 
tributes of others at death 
of Piatt, 598 ff.; from Wil- 
liam E. Chandler, 599; 
from Nelson W. Aldrich, 
599; from William B. Alli- 
son, 600; from Shelby M. 
Cullom, 600; from Presi- 
dent Taft, 600; from John 
C. Spooner, 600; from 
Elihu Root, 600; from Ed- 
ward Everett Hale, 600- 
I ; from Charles W. Fair- 
banks, 601; from Leslie 
M. Shaw, 601 ; from Simeon 
E. Baldwin, 601-2; eulogies 
spoken by Henry Cabot 
Lodge, 603-9; by Governor 
Bulkeley, 609-11; by F. B. 
Brandegee, 611-3; by 
Albert J. Beveridge, 613-4; 
by Nelson W. Aldrich, 614- 
5; by John T. Morgan, 615; 
by Knute Nelson, 615-6; 
by George W. Perkins, 616- 
7; by N. D. Sperry, 617; 
by Mr. Hill, 617-8; Appen- 
dix, 619 ff. ; memorial reso- 
lutions adopted by General 
Assembly of Connecticut, 
619-20; message of Gov- 
ernor Roberts announcing 
death of Piatt, 620-2; 
bronze memorials, 622 ; Piatt 
National Park, 623; edi- 
torial tributes from Hart- 
ford Courant, 623-5; Water- 
bury ^wen'caw, 625; Water- 
bury Republican, 625-6; 
Meriden Record, 626; New 
Haven Leader, 62 6-y, New 



Index 



653 



Piatt, Orville H. — Cotituiued 

Haven Register, 627; New 
Haven Journal and Courier, 
627; New London Globe, 
627-8; Brooklyn Eagle, 
628-9; New York Evening 
Post, 629; New York 
Staats-Zeitung, 629; Phila- 
delphia Press, 633; Peoria 
Evening Star, 633; Sioux 
Falls Press, 634; Kansas 
City Journal, 634; Topeka 
Capital, 635; Seattle Post- 
Intelligencer, 635; Atlanta 
Constitution, 635 

Piatt Amendment, 341-3, 37 1 

Piatt memorials, 622 

Piatt, Simeon, offer of aid in 
financial difficulty, 35 

Piatt, Thomas Collier, 198; con- 
trol of New York appoint- 
ments, 532, 544, 546-7 

Plumb, Preston B., 55; amend- 
ment to Morrill bill, 180 

Porter, John Addison, support 
of McKinley, 543; suggests 
Piatt for Vice-President, 

Porto Rican tariff, 357 ff. 

Porto Rico, acquisition of, com- 
pared to that of Philippines, 
301 

Post, Hartford {see Hartford 
Post 

Proctor, Redfield, in Fifty-sixth 
Congress, 312; at funeral of 
Piatt, 586 

Pugh, James Lawrence, opposes 
Lodge election bill, 228 

Pure Food bill, 577 

Putnam, George Haven, secre- 
tary American Publishers' 
Copyright League, 90; cor- 
respondence with, 108-9; 
letter from, 11 1-3 



Q 



Quay, Matthew Stanley, con- 
nection with Lodge bill, 231; 
letter from Piatt regarding, 
232-4, 416,544.546-7 



R 



Railroad rates, 522 



Reciprocity with Cuba, 369 
Reed, Thomas H., aid of Inter- 
national Copyright hill, 92; 
Mills bill, 223; clianj;i- ui 
rules, 227; attitude toward 
Cuba, 258; anli-imp(.Tial- 
ism, 285, 294; support of, 
in Connecticut, 502, 542, 
546; Fesscndcn episode, 549 
Reeves, defalcation of, 320 
River and Harbor bill of 1882, 

496 
Roberts, Governor Henry, 517 
Roosevelt, Theodore, message of 
December, 1902, 206; ac- 
cepts McKinley's Cuban 
policy, 373; special mes- 
sage on Cuban reciprocity, 
376; negotiates reciprocity 
treaty with Cuba, 379; an- 
nual message on same, 379; 
calls extra session, 380; in- 
clines to tariff revision, 3S5; 
Piatt calls on, 385; calls 
special session, 410; Piatt's 
letter supporting, 429; dis- 
cusses trusts with Piatt, 
445; recommends railroad 
legislation, 461; dealings 
with Panama, 484; Panama 
policy assailed, 486; friend- 
liness toward Piatt, 511- 
3; conservatism of, 517; 
Piatt's speech on, 520; in- 
tends calling extra session, 
1903, 564; quotation from, 
560; Piatt supports, in 1904 
election, 566; action on Pen- 
sion Order 78, 567; postal 
investigation, 568; results 
of 1904 victory, 572; letter 
from, to C. H. Butler, con- 
cerning Piatt, 582; speaks 
to James Piatt praising his 
father, 595 
Root, Elihu, Secretary of V\ ar, 
311; consulted by Cuban 
delegates, 344; relation to 
Piatt Amendment, 349-5° ; 
Porto Rican tariff, 362; 
tribute to Piatt, 600 
Rosebud Reservation, 128-9 
Russell, Charles A., member 
Ways and Means Commit- 
tee, 253; eulogy of Piatt on, 
590 



654 



, Index 



Sampson, board of inquiry, 269; 
fleet sails for Cuba, 284 

San Domingo treaty, 576,578, 581 

Saulsbury, Eli, 55 

Scott, William L., Chinese bill, 
157; Piatt protests, 158-60 

Scribner, Charles, 91 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 625 

Seligman & Co., 575 

Senate, rules of, 395; amend- 
ment to Rule IX., 403; 
Piatt's speech on same, 

403-4 
Senatorship, Piatt's ideal of, 

595 

Seymour, Thomas H., 32, 33 

Shaw, Leslie M., letter from 
Piatt to, 532; tribute to 
Piatt, 601 

Sherman, James Schoolcraft, 
eulogy on Piatt, 602 

Sherman, John, international 
copyright, 100; Silver act, 
180-1 ; Senate FinanceCom- 
mittee, 233; in Hayes's 
Cabinet, 494 

Sherman Anti-Trust bill, 442 

Sherman law, filibuster over, 401 

Sherman, Roger, 603 

Silliman, Benjamin, 14 

Simonds, William E., advocate 
international copyright, 92; 
leading member Confer- 
ence Committee on same, 
loi; receives decoration 
Legion of Honor, 103 

Sioux Falls Press, 634 

Slavery, Piatt discusses effects 
of, 223-4 

Smith, Hoke, Piatt criticises 
conduct of Indian affairs, 
. 124-5 

Smith, Jeannie P., marriage to 
Senator Piatt, 26 

Smith, Truman, 26 

Smithsonian Institution, Piatt 
regent of, 593 

Smyth, Newman, opposes Pan- 
ama policy, 486 

South Dakota, debt to Piatt, 

634 
Spain, Piatt discusses war with, 

281-2 
Sperry, N. D., member ball club 



at Meriden, 28; letters from 
Piatt to, 29, 270; eulogv on 
Piatt, 617 

Spooner, John Coit, in Fifty- 
sixth Congress. 312; Cuban 
allowances, 326-7; speech 
on Cuban investigation, 
327; opposes Cuban bonds, 
340; aid on Piatt Amend- 
ment, 341 ; withdraws from 
Judiciary Committee, 425; 
interstate commerce, 457; 
conference with Piatt, 564; 
arbitration, 575, 579; trib- 
ute to Piatt, 600 

Standing Rock Reservation, 126 

Stcdman, E. C, 102 

Stewart, William M.. 179, 429; 
discussion of Indian matters 
with, 576 

St. Louis, delegates to, 544 

Sugar, Democratic vote on, 246 

Swayne, Charles, impeachment 
'of. 573. 579-80 

Syndicat de la Propri^td Littd- 
raire et Artistique, 103. 104 



Taft, in Philippines, 31 1 ; tribute 

to Piatt, 600 

Taliaferro, James Piper, 312,341 

Tariff revision, Piatt's letter to 

Roosevelt on, 387; Piatt 

writes to friends concerning, 

391-4 

Teller, Henry M., 55, 312, Cu- 
ban amendment, 314; visits 
Cuba, 320; aid in Piatt 
Amendment, 341; assails 
Philippine policy, 363; Piatt 
replies to attack on Cu- 
ban reciprocity by, 377 ; 
asserts privilege of declining 
to answer roll-call, 402; re- 
signs, 571; eulogy on Piatt, 
603 

Teller resolution, 347 

Templier, A., 104 

Terry, Major-General Alfred H., 
28, 29 

Tillman, Benjamin, 409; quarrel 
with McLaurin, 415 

Tin plate, dutv on, favored by 
Piatt, 225' 

Topcka Capital, 635 



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